Obama Shifts His Pitch For The Trans-Pacific Partnership - WaPo

[WillyT]

Obama shifts his pitch for the Trans-Pacific Partnership
By David Nakamura - WaPo
April 26 at 5:58 PM

<snip>

Pitching his Pacific free-trade initiative to business leaders last December, President Obama framed it as a foreign policy gambit: He mentioned the looming threat of China 18 times in remarks to the Business Roundtable.

Last week, while making the case to 200 liberal activists, Obama mentioned China only once.

Instead, in a 4,000-word address to Organizing for Action (OFA), Obama sought to place his trade pact alongside his signature domestic initiatives, including his health-care law, auto industry bailout, student loan consolidation and Wall Street reform.

The sharp shift in the way Obama is now presenting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation trade deal in the Asia Pacific region, illustrates his biggest challenge as he tries to wrap up a late-term policy victory over fierce opposition from fellow Democrats.

His critics on the left are calling the TPP a job-killing, big-business boondoggle aimed at satisfying K Street corporate interests. And that has put Obama under pressure to explain how the pact will help ordinary American workers and families. In his weekly radio address, he called the deal “vital to middle-class economics.”

It hasn’t been easy. Facing heat from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the AFL-CIO and even usually friendly MSNBC hosts, Obama has sounded incredulous that his progressive bona fides are coming under question.

“When people say that this trade deal is bad for working families, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Obama told OFA, the advocacy group that evolved from his campaign apparatus. “I take that personally. My entire presidency has been about helping working families. I’ve been working too hard at this. I’ve got some of those folks who are saying this stuff after all I’ve done to help lift their industries up.”

It is a frustrating reversal of fortune for Obama, who was embraced in 2008 as the progressive darling of “hope and change.” Now, even his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom progressives abandoned in the 2008 primary, hedged recently in her support for the TPP as she lurches to the left to shore up support from the base ahead of her 2016 campaign.

<snip>

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-shifts-his-pitch-for-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/04/26/6e420632-ea8c-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html

[marym625]

1. K&R

Interesting. Very interesting

[still_one]

2. No matter what the Washington Post attributes to the President, China was always a big part of the

justification for the TPP. As far as Hillary "hedging" on the TPP, I am not even sure what that means. In the recent past she has expressed support for trade deals, and as far as I know she hasn't said where she stands one way or another on the TPP. That isn't a hedge, that is politics.

I am personally trying to understand both sides of the arguments regarding the TPP, before I decide, but one thing I am against is that it should NOT be fast tracked, and should require a 2/3 majority in the Senate

[WillyT]

8. Did You Catch This:

DULink: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026560668

[still_one]

11. Thanks Willy, I'll read it

[still_one]

18. Even in cartoon form it is a lot to digest. One thing mentioned that I wondered about was the

statement:

"A party may not deny a patent solely on the basis that the new product
did not result in enhanced efficacy of the known product."

Isn't that what generic products is all about, at least as far a medicines are concerned, generics must show the equivalent benefit of the brand name

[WillyT]

19. It Looks Like They're Trying To Limit/Get Rid Of Generics...

By extending patent protections far into the future.

[ibegurpard]

3. Obama and everyone arguing this

seem to have conveniently forgotten his betrayal of progressive policy positions on the ACA (no public option), education (pushing charter schools), government transparency, and a host of other issues.

[billhicks76]

15. Smoke & Mirrors

We have all been deceived and anyone clinging to phony imagery of Obama being for personal freedoms or protection from corporate warfare is living a lie. He's just maintaining the corporate, war state status quo for a real hawk to come in and finish the job.

[GeorgeGist]

4. 90% 0f Obama's economic recovery has gone to the rich ...

instead of the middle class.

[woo me with science]

26. Try ALL of it. The theft has escalated during this presidency.

The Richest 1 Percent Have Captured 121 Percent Of Income Gains During The Recovery
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/12/1579211/1-percent-121-gains/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022365380

Last year, economist Emmanuel Saez estimated that the richest 1 percent of the U.S. captured a whopping 93 percent of the income gains in 2010, as the U.S. was emerging from the Great Recession. Saez is now back with updated numbers from 2011, and they make the picture look even grimmer:

From 2009 to 2011, average real income per family grew modestly by 1.7% (Table 1) but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.2% while bottom 99% incomes shrunk by 0.4%. Hence, the top 1% captured 121% of the income gains in the first two years of the recovery. From 2009 to 2010, top 1% grew fast and then stagnated from 2010 to 2011. Bottom 99% stagnated both from 2009 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2011.

How is it possible for the 1 percent to capture more than all of the nation’s income gains? The number is due to the fact that those at the bottom saw their incomes drop. As Timothy Noah explained in the New Republic, “the one percent didn’t just gobble up all of the recovery during 2010 and 2011; it put the 99 percent back into recession.”

Saez added that “In 2012, top 1% income will likely surge, due to booming stock-prices, as well as re-timing of income to avoid the higher 2013 top tax rates…This suggests that the Great Recession has only depressed top income shares temporarily and will not undo any of the dramatic increase in top income shares that has taken place since the 1970s.”

[Vattel]

5. I have no opinion about the merits of the TPP

but Obama should learn that being dishonest about it is not the way to win people over.

[rhett o rick]

9. In 2008 the Banksters blackmail the American people by threatening to blow up the economy.

We paid the ransom of about $1 trillion dollars. Goldman-Sachs (H.Clinton's sponsor) danced a jig and did high-fives all around.

The 64 Billion Dollar Question is, when will they do it again? Why work if you can blackmail the American government for a trillion?

My guess is that we will have another bank crisis about this time next year maybe closer to October. What a surprise that will be.

Break up Bank of America. Support the creation of state banks.

[billhicks76]

16. And When That Occurs...

Will the pitchforks come out?

[rhett o rick]

36. Sadly the average people won't understand the damage. If it doesn't immediately effect them

they aren't interested. Hopefully the Populist Movement will open the eyes of the American public.

[Fuddnik]

25. !

[rhett o rick]

7. How very, very sad that a Democratic President would say, "“When people say that this trade deal is

bad for working families, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” That's very easy to remedy. TELL US HOW IT WILL HELP WORKING FAMILIES. Instead, he says TRUST ME, TRUST ME. Isn't that what Pres Clinton said when he signed NAFTA?

Explain to us how, Mr. President, how will this help working families.

[billhicks76]

17. Clinton And Obama Rep For The Bush Family

Anyone who doesn't think that should try reading more.

[BrotherIvan]

10. That's just sad

Now the raison d'être for the TPP is to help "working families?" That is some bull shit.

[Fearless]

12. The fear of the unknown boogie man only works on Republicans.

[Enthusiast]

13. Kicked

and recommended a whole bunch!

[Doctor_J]

14. one speech for the hoi polloi, another for his benefactors. how can anyone trust him any more?

His stock market boom has made me some money in my institutional retirement account, but that gain was completely wiped out by my new heritage care premiums. Then there's the devastation of the party since he adopted his corporate giveaway strategy.

[NYC_SKP]

33. Wait. What? Did you say, "I now can't believe this Hawaiian car salesman ever went to Harvard . ."

Good grief, Sir!

And, good riddance!

[raindaddy]

21. Very Simple...

Embrace the transparency you promised and let us read the damn thing! And stop expecting everyone to fall in line because you claim the bill is good for working families... That might work with republicans and some moderates but not with progressives...

[Thespian2]

22. K & R !!!

Heat is really hot...isn't it?

[hifiguy]

23. Wall $treet Reform??

Did I miss something?

The too-big-to-fails are bigger and more powerful than ever and absolutely no one went to jail.

Reform, my shiny metal ass.

[Caretha]

35. I choked on that statement too

Reform my ass!

[colsohlibgal]

24. He's Either Delusional Or Deceptive

His whole presidency has been about helping the middle class? Complete poppycock.

It's come out recently that he held the line against providing any foreclosure relief while he was bailing out the big Wall Street players - who got to keep all their obscene wealth made from defrauding the public. Of course after all his lefty talk running he brings in as his financial team, all the in and out of Wall Street hacks who caused the crash with their anti regulation nonsense.

And not one of the Wall Street big shots spent even a minute in prison, he and Holder prosecuted none of them - for obvious and blatant fraud that enriched them and bankrupted millions.

Anyone thinking otherwise needs to watch "Inside Job".

This is a battle to reclaim the soul of the democratic party and the democrats on the side of liberals are Senators Warren and Brown.

[woo me with science]

27. Thank you. ENOUGH national delusion. We were had.

It was a Bait and Switch presidency. Hope and Change was a lie from the very beginning.

And they are lining up the next two corporate puppets to play Candidate A and Candidate B in 2016.

We live in Oligarchy now.


Bernie Sanders is right. We need nothing less than political revolution, which is why I expect the PTB will do anything, and I mean anything, to keep him from being heard.

[840high]

28. We were had? I won't be as polite

as you. We've been screwed.

[MissDeeds]

31. Could not agree more n/t

[markpkessinger]

29. Desperation really doesn't become you, Mr. President n/t

[morningfog]

30. Reframing a turd.Thank you Sen. Warren for making him squirm.

[MisterP]

32. yeah, from "you're a racist like Bull Connor" to "you're a conspiracist idiot like Sarah Palin"

[Scuba]

34. "My entire presidency has been about helping working families."

Yeah, Jamie's family and Lloyd's family.

[rhett o rick]

37. Don't leave out the Pritzkers. nm