...“There is a reason why it’s called economic populism: it’s because it’s popular,” says Charles Chamberlain of Democracy of America, whose 1 million activists support both Sanders and the more reluctant Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, whom they are also encouraging to run.

“It’s a real stretch to say [Sanders] is out of the mainstream; he is very much ahead of the curve when it comes to a lot of politicians in Washington,” argues Chamberlain. “It is Washington DC that is out of touch with where the average American is really at.”

For this reason, many progressive activists rankle at the description of their members and favoured candidates as leftwing.

“I don’t call ourselves ‘left’ and part of the reason is the centre of the country agrees with us,” claims Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
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Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As the middle class continues to decline and the gap between the very rich and everyone else grows wider, we should keep that in mind as Congress debates the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest trade agreement in American history.

Trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta) and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China have been abysmal failures: they allowed corporations to shut down operations in the US and move work to low-wage countries where people are forced to work for pennies an hour; and they are one of the reasons that we have lost almost 60,000 factories in our country and millions of good-paying jobs since 2001.

The TPP is simply the continuation of a failed approach to trade – an approach which benefits large multinational corporations and Wall Street, but which is a disaster for working families. The TPP must be defeated, but our overall trade policy must also change for corporations to start investing in America and creating jobs here again, and not just in China and other low wage countries.

Before even Congress votes on any final trade agreement, the President has asked for “fast track authority” (also called Trade Promotion Authority or TPA) to complete TPP negotiations with 11 other countries. Fast track would relinquish Congress’s constitutional authority to the President to “regulate commerce with foreign nations”, limit our debate and prevent members of Congress from improving trade agreements to benefit the American people.

I intend to do everything I can to defeat both fast track and the overall TPP agreement. Our goal in Congress must be to make sure that American-made products, not American jobs, are our number-one export. We’ll never be able to do that if we enact the TPP and continue negotiating other treaties based on the same failed policies.
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