UPDATE: I've gone back and forth on this but Tom Brown now tells me he looked it up and it's Richard Trumka-I'd spelled it Trumpka in the first copy.
In a post yesterday, I'd talked about the pressure that Hillary is under on TPP-how it's similar to the pressure that Rebecca May, the most likely next Conservative PM, is under in Britain regarding Brexit.
"He said Trump was a fraud, but HRC had honestly changed her mind (from the days when she said it was the "gold standard" of trade deals). He said he was initially on board with the concept but that it has proven to be flawed. So Hillary is in kind of a tight spot... maybe they can renegotiate some bits of it, and claim it's all fixed now?"
https://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/07/brexit-tpp-and-year-of-woman.html?showComment=1467543695744#c4220287720631534051
That's the key. Trumka himself was initially on board. That's Hillary position as well. So if Hillary later says it's fixed, Trumka might agree.
Trump has warned that Hillary will probably call for renegotiating some bits of it and claim it's all fixed now.
But she has Trumka backing her up all the way.
So maybe this is the way TPP does happen, after all.
Trumka in the terms of Bryan Caplan, gives Hillary some 'wiggle room.'
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies-ebook/dp/B007AIXLDI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467547142&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3ABryan+Caplan#navbar
More wiggle room is that Obama just might do it in his lame duck. How does Hillary stop him from doing that?
In a post yesterday, I'd talked about the pressure that Hillary is under on TPP-how it's similar to the pressure that Rebecca May, the most likely next Conservative PM, is under in Britain regarding Brexit.
May is for Remain but has had to promise to execute Brexit if PM. Similarly Hillary has had to claim she's anti TPP and is now under pressure to condemn Obama passing it in the lame duck.
Donald Trump, of course, has been promising to rip up TPP root and branch on his first day in office.
This has a very old history in our politics. If you run for President, you're anti trade. Obama himself, in 2008, and run on rewriting NAFTA. Hillary at the time vowed no more trade deals-and she had voted against CAFTA in 2007.
But the incentives for a Presidential candidate are very different than for a President. Presidents once in office, regardless of party, like trade deals. The reason for this is often more about geopolitics as in the case of TPP than economics.
After Trump's trade speech this week he argued that Trumka and the unions should be for him.
In the case of Trumka-and most of the trade bosses-I don't believe for a minute that this would ever happen. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a Republican since Nixon in 1968.
Trumka is going to support the Democrat in almost every case. I suspect on some level he knows that the public stance of the unions-that trade deals are the devil-is overdone.
He knows it's more complicated than that and that there are other issues for the working guy than just TPP.
But Tom Brown's comment here gave me something of an epiphany:
"He said Trump was a fraud, but HRC had honestly changed her mind (from the days when she said it was the "gold standard" of trade deals). He said he was initially on board with the concept but that it has proven to be flawed. So Hillary is in kind of a tight spot... maybe they can renegotiate some bits of it, and claim it's all fixed now?"
https://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/07/brexit-tpp-and-year-of-woman.html?showComment=1467543695744#c4220287720631534051
That's the key. Trumka himself was initially on board. That's Hillary position as well. So if Hillary later says it's fixed, Trumka might agree.
Trump has warned that Hillary will probably call for renegotiating some bits of it and claim it's all fixed now.
But she has Trumka backing her up all the way.
So maybe this is the way TPP does happen, after all.
Trumka in the terms of Bryan Caplan, gives Hillary some 'wiggle room.'
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational-Voter-Democracies-Policies-ebook/dp/B007AIXLDI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467547142&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3ABryan+Caplan#navbar
More wiggle room is that Obama just might do it in his lame duck. How does Hillary stop him from doing that?
Mike, I didn't know how to spell Richard Trumka's name yesterday, and when you spelled it without a "p" I took notice (because they seemed to pronounce a "p" on Hardball), so I took notice again today when you included a "p" every single time, including your title. But that appears to be incorrect.
ReplyDeleteO/T: This was awesome: one of the pro-life fanatics over at TheResurgent must have seen one of my proposed Pro-life starts with human survival. HRC 2016! bumper sticker ideas I left for you here yesterday, because he basically makes that point and seems, this morning, to be extremely reluctantly endorsing Hillary (he's the first one AFAIK at TheResurgent to do so, joining Ben Howe at RedState). I'm going to guess that Leon H. Wolf at RedState will be next. Anyway, I thought you'd enjoy that bit of news. I certainly did! I love the title to his piece as well:
It's Time to Get Honest
The author's name is Jason Taylor.
This is a pretty huge threshold to cross at the Resurgent which tends to track Erickson's views more closely than does RedState these days (the two sets of authors do not "cross pollinate" much outside of the extremely infrequent piece by Erickson himself, and occasionally crediting each other for a piece of information).
Now I don't expect that Erickson will ever go that far. And on the other side of the coin, over at RedState, I don't expect Caleb Howe (a relation to Ben Howe? I don't know) to go that far either. Why? Because Erick and Caleb represent principled yet extremist writers, but extreme about different subjects.
To both their credits, they don't trust Trump and realize he's an authoritarian, dangerous, untrustworthy man-child, that will stoop to any low down dirty trick in the book to grab power, including blatant appeals to naked racism, which is especially galling to Erickson (I'm less sure it's such a big deal to Caleb).
However on abortion, Erickson cannot bring himself to vote for anyone who condones it. He just won't go there. That's maybe the one issue on which he won't compromise. Now does he believe that Trump will actually follow through on his promise to appoint anti-abortion supreme court justices? No, not at all. Realistically is it perhaps a wee bit more probable that he will? Absolutely (in my estimation) but to his credit, that wee bit higher probability is not enough to make Erickson waver from his #NeverTrump stance.
Caleb Howe is also concerned with the supreme court, but his big issue is the 2nd amendment.
So if anything, I can maybe see Caleb eventually deciding to vote Trump but he's more likely a Johnson voter, but I fully expect Erickson to write in Cruz (he won't vote for Johnson because he too is pro-abortion rights).
streiff is another who will never vote Hillary, but that's because he's got an extreme case of Hillary Derangement Syndrome. I think it's a person like streiff that Taylor's article is directed at... "It's Time to Get Honest."
If you're not an anti-abortion extremist or a pro-second amendment extremist, there really is no excuse for not considering Hillary over Johnson, because let's be honest: even if we accept the mainstream Republican talking points against her without question, it's still no contest when compared to Trump. It boils down to this (worst case), and how I'd make the case if I was a main stream Republican than accepted the worst case against Hillary but still was trying to convince my fellow Republicans to vote for her because Trump is so awful:
DeleteHillary: she wasn't careful with her emails and she wasn't completely forthcoming about the situation after the fact. Also, perhaps four American lives in Benghazi could have been saved had she realized the dangers there more accurately (compare with a mountain of corpses and trillions in treasure lost with Bush for the same offense) and she was deficient in being accurate, intentionally or not, (along with the rest of the administration) about the real cause of the violence there in the first week or two after the attack.
Other than that, she's pro-abortion rights (so deal with it) and she's pro gun control (so deal with it). So you hate her for that, and you hate the Clinton's in general ... just because they rub you the wrong way. So fucking what??? Get over it. That's NOT enough to disqualify her from the job, especially in light of the alternative. There's ample evidence that Trump is simply a two-bit utterly inept race-baiting con artist and megalomaniacal narcissist with zero ability to understand or learn how our government works, with zero skill at diplomancy, and with zero ability to appoint anybody except dangerous sycophant suck-up yes men who will only tell him what he wants to hear. Trump will thus be an extremely dangerous unmitigated disaster, even if you get lucky and get the supreme court justices you'd want.
I wonder if that just **might** be an effective debate tactic against a die hard Republican who hates Trump, but is leaning towards voting for him anyway because they hate Hillary more. Grant them the the entire "mainstream," Fox News narrative worst case evaluation of Hillary as the God's honest truth, and then point out that it still pails in comparison to what's glaringly obvious about Trump. Of course don't grant them any conspiri-tard BS about her (e.g. that she and Bill murder people in their spare time, sacrifice puppies and children to Satan, and will force people to get transgender surgeries and gay marry barn animals). Just the "mainstream" right wing worst case scenario, which to make it even shorter is simply "She could have been more careful, honest, and she's going to appoint supreme court justices you hate regarding those two issues (at least). Pretty much just like Obama, who's administration you survived just fine."
Yes, I figured out the best way to spell his name is Trump+ka.
DeleteIf they can''t vote for Hillary, Johnson is the next best thing
... also, regarding the supreme court and legislation in general (like gun control that goes too far for a right winger) point out that it's unlikely the house will turn blue (at least to 2020, and even there they'll have to get damn lucky and turn a few statehouses in time for the 2020 census), and it's unlikely that the Dems will have a filibuster proof Senate majority... thus pretty much ensuring that supreme court nominees will have to be compromises and that any gun control measures will have to be watered down to almost useless.
DeleteChuck Todd had Tom Cotton on this morning. Finally Todd but him off and asked if Cotton had any reason for Trump at all?
DeleteBecause all Cotton did was talk about why Hillary is allegedly so bad.
"Yes, I figured out the best way to spell his name is Trump+ka."
DeleteBut wait, my point was that's incorrect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trumka
Also I think a positive case can be made for Hillary (to a Republican) being much more effective on trade, actually defeating ISIS and general all around foreign relations (and even domestic policy, outside of immigration perhaps) competence.
DeletePlus there's the prospect of Trump representing the Republican brand, which currently *IS* catastrophic for Republicans, so why on Earth give him even more power, time and rope to hang all of you with? Do you really want Trump to take a raw sewage canon to all things Republican for four long years??? You'll never wash off the stench. The GOP will be much better off in the long run with a single term of HRC.
Well the foreign policy Republicans prefer her for sure. Any GOPer who likes trade deals certainly has to go to her, assuming this is an important issue for them.
DeleteWith a single HRC term they have someone to demonize for the next four years and try to get back in 2020
"With a single HRC term they have someone to demonize for the next four years and try to get back in 2020"
DeleteExactly! Perhaps the most effective argument yet.
OK, so I was spelling him right originally. I thought i saw it spelled Trumpka somewhere. Oh well
ReplyDelete