There's a battle for the Democratic party platform. Bernie has won plenty-too many?-concessions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/07/01/bernie-sanders-is-winning-some-big-victories-over-the-dem-platform/
But Bernie is not happy because he wants everything. After all, who won the primary? Oh wait...
Maybe, he'll allow her regular White House visits.
He wants an anti TPP Dem platform. He's not going to get it, as that would be a slap in Obama's face.
"That became clear last weekend in St. Louis, when the platform drafting committee -- which includes just five Sanders appointees -- shot down a TPP plank. According to several committee members, the president personally spoke to the drafting committee's chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), and the White House did more outreach to make sure that Clinton appointees who might otherwise oppose TPP did not write that into the platform."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/29/obama-and-sanders-battle-over-tpp-and-the-democratic-platform/
Love how the media tries to make it a scandal: only five on the committee. Of course, he lost the primary. That's plenty representation considering.
"Both candidates -- Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders -- oppose the TPP because it has failed to meet the standards that this committee has laid out," said Paul Booth, the executive assistant to the president of AFSCME, and a Clinton appointee. "But the platform committee should affirm what our candidates have said, but not imply that all Democrats are in agreement."
James Zogby, a Sanders appointee to the committee and the head of the Arab American Institute, said the party has already moved firmly against the TPP. That made him question why it would be a dramatic affront to the president to put the party on record for something the congressional party and its labor union supporters largely agreed with.
"No one called me," said environmentalist Bill McKibben, another Sanders appointee. "I eagerly supported the TPP plank."
But on Friday, as Democrats debated Rep. Keith Ellison's (D-Minn.) strong anti-TPP plank, Clinton allies and DNC appointees were blunt. To change the language would be to undermine the president.
"The vast majority of Democrats in the House will not vote for the [TPP]," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Clinton appointee. "That's really not the point. I haven't voted for a trade agreement since I joined the Congress in 1993. Having said that, there are Democrats who believe in the trade agreement. I could say to them: You're not important. I could say that. I've done that in the past. But what I don't want to do is leave this place disregarding the position of the President of the United States."
"As the platform drafters explained themselves, only one -- former California congressman Howard Berman -- said that the president was right on the merits about the TPP. Cummings was even more adamant than Gutierrez, suggesting that a TPP plank would undercut a president beloved by Democrats."
"We have one president, and I have listened to him argue his case many times, and I know that he truly believes this," said Cummings. "He really does. I disagree with him, but I don't want to do anything, as he ends his term, to undercut the president. I'm just not going to do it. In his last six months? I'm not gonna do that."
"The uneasiness continued when progressive committee members reacted to the platform's passage. Four of Sanders's five appointees backed the platform; all four lamented the watering-down of the trade section."
So this is not likely to make the platform as it would be seen as a rebuke of the President:
"As he faced the press in Ottawa today, flanked by other leaders of NAFTA signatories, President Obama argued that both the right and left were misleading people about the challenges of global trade. It was true, he said that workers left out of economic growth were growing angrier. As they did so, "the social cohesion and political consensus needed for liberal market economies starts breaking down," as seen in the Brexit vote. But their anger was being misdirected."
"The prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market, that's the wrong medicine," he said. "You are right to be concerned about the trends, but what you're prescribing will not work."
"There was no mystery about who on the right and left Obama was talking to. At a rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump said that the president and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were wrong to back the Trans Pacific Partnership. In an op-ed published in today's New York Times, Sen. Bernie Sanders told readers that Trump was wrong about the solution but right about the threat."
"We need to fundamentally reject our 'free trade' policies and move to fair trade," wrote Sanders. "Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour. We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models."
But everyone says 'fair trade.' It's not like Bill Clinton went out of his way to give us an unfair trade deal in the 90s. NAFTA had things like minimum wage and regulatory protections.
""When I talk to people in this district about trade, it’s both about a loss of jobs and a loss of power," said Teachout. "NAFTA, as negotiated, has not helped our workers. I’m really happy to see that we are really rethinking trade."
Obama himself ran on 're-negotiation of NAFTA' as did Bernie this year. But I never see anyone get specific. What exactly is in the NAFTA agreement-not what's wrong with trade deals in general, in theory-that is hurting American workers today and how do Teachout, Bernie, or Trump propose to fix it?
They would have to figure out a way to 're-negotiate' that would also be satisfactory to Mexico and Canada.
I think that many on both sides of the trade debate overstate things. It's neither a job creator or a job destroyer.
You can argue that it can hurt wages-if the trading partner in question has wages far below ours. Is it the claim of Bernie and Trump that a bunch of employers are fleeing down to Mexico today because of lower wages?
But aren't Canadian wages higher than ours? Why aren't Canadian companies all coming to the US?
As for China, 20 years ago they did have much lower wages but they are up considerably from then. So cracking down on them now would be closing the barn door after the cows are all gone.
And employers don't only look at wages when considering where to do business. That's only one factor and often not the top one.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/07/01/bernie-sanders-is-winning-some-big-victories-over-the-dem-platform/
But Bernie is not happy because he wants everything. After all, who won the primary? Oh wait...
Maybe, he'll allow her regular White House visits.
He wants an anti TPP Dem platform. He's not going to get it, as that would be a slap in Obama's face.
"That became clear last weekend in St. Louis, when the platform drafting committee -- which includes just five Sanders appointees -- shot down a TPP plank. According to several committee members, the president personally spoke to the drafting committee's chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), and the White House did more outreach to make sure that Clinton appointees who might otherwise oppose TPP did not write that into the platform."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/29/obama-and-sanders-battle-over-tpp-and-the-democratic-platform/
Love how the media tries to make it a scandal: only five on the committee. Of course, he lost the primary. That's plenty representation considering.
"Both candidates -- Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders -- oppose the TPP because it has failed to meet the standards that this committee has laid out," said Paul Booth, the executive assistant to the president of AFSCME, and a Clinton appointee. "But the platform committee should affirm what our candidates have said, but not imply that all Democrats are in agreement."
James Zogby, a Sanders appointee to the committee and the head of the Arab American Institute, said the party has already moved firmly against the TPP. That made him question why it would be a dramatic affront to the president to put the party on record for something the congressional party and its labor union supporters largely agreed with.
"No one called me," said environmentalist Bill McKibben, another Sanders appointee. "I eagerly supported the TPP plank."
But on Friday, as Democrats debated Rep. Keith Ellison's (D-Minn.) strong anti-TPP plank, Clinton allies and DNC appointees were blunt. To change the language would be to undermine the president.
"The vast majority of Democrats in the House will not vote for the [TPP]," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Clinton appointee. "That's really not the point. I haven't voted for a trade agreement since I joined the Congress in 1993. Having said that, there are Democrats who believe in the trade agreement. I could say to them: You're not important. I could say that. I've done that in the past. But what I don't want to do is leave this place disregarding the position of the President of the United States."
"As the platform drafters explained themselves, only one -- former California congressman Howard Berman -- said that the president was right on the merits about the TPP. Cummings was even more adamant than Gutierrez, suggesting that a TPP plank would undercut a president beloved by Democrats."
"We have one president, and I have listened to him argue his case many times, and I know that he truly believes this," said Cummings. "He really does. I disagree with him, but I don't want to do anything, as he ends his term, to undercut the president. I'm just not going to do it. In his last six months? I'm not gonna do that."
"The uneasiness continued when progressive committee members reacted to the platform's passage. Four of Sanders's five appointees backed the platform; all four lamented the watering-down of the trade section."
So this is not likely to make the platform as it would be seen as a rebuke of the President:
"As he faced the press in Ottawa today, flanked by other leaders of NAFTA signatories, President Obama argued that both the right and left were misleading people about the challenges of global trade. It was true, he said that workers left out of economic growth were growing angrier. As they did so, "the social cohesion and political consensus needed for liberal market economies starts breaking down," as seen in the Brexit vote. But their anger was being misdirected."
"The prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market, that's the wrong medicine," he said. "You are right to be concerned about the trends, but what you're prescribing will not work."
"There was no mystery about who on the right and left Obama was talking to. At a rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump said that the president and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were wrong to back the Trans Pacific Partnership. In an op-ed published in today's New York Times, Sen. Bernie Sanders told readers that Trump was wrong about the solution but right about the threat."
"We need to fundamentally reject our 'free trade' policies and move to fair trade," wrote Sanders. "Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour. We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models."
But everyone says 'fair trade.' It's not like Bill Clinton went out of his way to give us an unfair trade deal in the 90s. NAFTA had things like minimum wage and regulatory protections.
Maybe someone complains those protections weren't good enough. But making the protections stronger is something of a zero sum game with our trading partners, as it hurts the ability of second and third world countries from competing.
"And outside of the platform committee, Sanders is having no problem finding allies. Zephyr Teachout, a Sanders supporter who won the Democratic nomination for New York's 19th congressional district last night, told the Washington Post that she would oppose the TPP and push for re-negotiation of NAFTA."""When I talk to people in this district about trade, it’s both about a loss of jobs and a loss of power," said Teachout. "NAFTA, as negotiated, has not helped our workers. I’m really happy to see that we are really rethinking trade."
Obama himself ran on 're-negotiation of NAFTA' as did Bernie this year. But I never see anyone get specific. What exactly is in the NAFTA agreement-not what's wrong with trade deals in general, in theory-that is hurting American workers today and how do Teachout, Bernie, or Trump propose to fix it?
They would have to figure out a way to 're-negotiate' that would also be satisfactory to Mexico and Canada.
I think that many on both sides of the trade debate overstate things. It's neither a job creator or a job destroyer.
You can argue that it can hurt wages-if the trading partner in question has wages far below ours. Is it the claim of Bernie and Trump that a bunch of employers are fleeing down to Mexico today because of lower wages?
But aren't Canadian wages higher than ours? Why aren't Canadian companies all coming to the US?
As for China, 20 years ago they did have much lower wages but they are up considerably from then. So cracking down on them now would be closing the barn door after the cows are all gone.
And employers don't only look at wages when considering where to do business. That's only one factor and often not the top one.
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