Shame on Obama and Clinton for Skipping Peru Trade Vote

posted by John Nichols on 12/04/2007 @ 5:14pm

Email
Print
Share
- Buzzflash
- del.icio.us
- Digg
- Facebook
- Mixx it!
- Reddit
What is this?
Take Action
Comments (24)

Subscribe Now

New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama desperately want Democrats to believe that they are serious about serving the American people as the next president of the United States.

But the party faithful – along with the independent and even Republican voters who may be asked to consider these contenders – would be well advised to distrust any claim of conscientiousness from this pair.

Clinton and Obama -- along with fellow Democrats Joe Biden, of Delaware, and Chris Dodd, of Connecticut, and Republican John McCain, of Arizona -- are not even serious about serving in their current positions as members of the U.S. Senate.

When the Senate voted Tuesday of the Peru Trade Agreement, a critical test of U.S. economic policy that raised fundamental questions with regard to how this country will frame its economic ties to hemispheric neighbors, the five senators who would be president were the only members of the chamber who missed the vote.

If we are to trust their statements with regard to the issue: Biden and Dodd would have voted against the Peru deal, while Obama and Clinton would have supported it.

But senators who don't bother to show up get the out of being able to rewrite history – including their own statements. And that appears to be more important to Clinton, Obama and their fellow senator-candidates than doing the job to which they were elected.

Would the presence of Obama, Clinton or the other contenders have changed the practical result of the vote? No. The Senate approved the Peru deal by a 77-18 majority, meaning that, in the words of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, "Congress (has) passed another job-killing trade agreement that will shut down our factories, hurt our communities, and send more unsafe food into our kitchens and consumer products into our children's bedrooms."

But if the standard that is applied to senators seeking the presidency is that only their positions on close votes matter, then Clinton would have been wise to skip the fall 2002 vote on whether to permit President Bush to attack Iraq. Then, she could have played the issue different ways, depending on the crowd she was talking to – just as Clinton, and to an even greater extent Obama, cynically portray themselves as corporate critics when they are in front of labor and farm audiences and corporate allies when they are shaking down Wall Street donors.

The fact is that the votes senators choose to skip tell us just as much about them as do the votes they cast.

Clinton, Obama, Biden, Dodd and McCain all have track records on trade issues that have tended to place them on the side of multinational conglomerates and investors rather than workers and farmers in the United States and abroad.

They have all taken too many wrong stands in the clearest and most meaningful economic debate facing the country today. Notably, their positions on past trade tests – and their failure to recognize the significance of Tuesday's Peru vote -- put them at odds with key voters in battleground states such as Ohio, which the Democratic presidential nominee will almost certainly need to win in November, 2008.

As Ohio Senator Brown, arguably the Senate's savviest critic of our country's misguided approach to trade, explained, "The trade polices set in Washington, and negotiated across the globe, have a direct impact on places like Toledo and Steubenville, Cleveland and Hamilton. And that is why voters in my state of Ohio, and across the country, sent a message loud and clear last November, demanding a new direction for our trade policy."

Brown, like the other freshmen Democrats elected to the Senate in 2006, understands something that Clinton and Obama are still missing. "Our current trade model chases short-term profits for the few, at the expense of long-term prosperity, health and safety for the many. It's a model that doesn't work. Look at our trade deficit, look at manufacturing job losses, look at wage stagnation, look at imported product recalls, look at forced labor, child labor, slave labor. Look what it does to communities," says the senator, who made changing trade policy a central issue in his successful challenge to Republican Senator Mike DeWine, as did other Democratic winners such as Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McMaskill of Missouri, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, John Tester of Montana and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island – all of whom opposed the Peru deal.

Senators who have actually faced the voters in key states in recent elections share Brown's position that, "We want trade and plenty of it – but under rules that raise standards and ensure American exports have a lasting and sustainable market of consumers. Trade can be a development tool. The American people want a pro-trade, pro-development, pro-labor and forward-looking approach."

That's the sort of statement that a Democratic presidential nominee should be making next year.

But neither Clinton nor Obama will be in a position to deliver the message -- at least not to any voter who expects more than empty rhetoric.

The Peru vote gave both senators a chance to send a clear signal that they understand the need to set a new course on trade. That signal would have helped to distinguish them from any of the likely Republican nominees. But they skipped the chance to make it. As such, Clinton and Obama are stuck with their records – which, at least on this issue, mark them as unacceptable choices.

Hopefully, Iowa voters, who are hearing so much from Clinton and Obama these days, will notice that both of the apparent frontrunners failed to stand with their own senator, Tom Harkin, a one-time proponent of free trade who saw the light some years ago and who on Tuesday voted against the Peru deal.

Comments (24)

Obama made clear at the last debate, which was "before" the vote, that he was in favor of the Peru agreement because it had adequate protections for workers and the environment.

With a +70 vote in favor of the agreement, why show up when you are in a neck-and-neck race in Iowa? Everyone has to set priorities, and Obama's number one priority right now is winning Iowa.

Posted by Metteyya at 12/04/2007 @ 5:41pm
Nichols:

But neither Clinton nor Obama will be in a position to deliver the message -- at least not to any voter who expects more than empty rhetoric.

That empty rhetoric is exactly why their campaigns have been so depressing along with the fact that the so-called mainstream media treats the race between these two robo-clones like a People magazine cover story instead of the most important and deadly serious election in US history.

Once again I refer the reader to something soothing this holiday season: Charlie Rose interviews John Edwards [charlierose.com]

The first 5&1/2 minutes brings enough fresh air to fumigate the ripened musty stench of the Obama and Clinton campaigns a few times over.

Then wait 'til you hear Edwards on nukes. His position would open some eyes if they weren't blindered in the burlap sacks of corporate news "coverage".

Posted by b_kool_66 at 12/04/2007 @ 6:47pm
No big surprise there! These people are Republican "lite", and not fit to be called Democrats. By the way, Trade is not a development tool! Tariffs are the development tool behind which infant economies are protected from the predatory practices of multinationals, big business, and developed states practicing Economic Imperialism.

Posted by P. J. Casey at 12/04/2007 @ 6:59pm
Speaking of nuclear weapon policy, the latest Tom Dispatch --hot off the presses-- is here:

Interview with Jonathan Schell, The Bomb in the Mind [tinyurl.com]

Enjoy!

Posted by b_kool_66 at 12/04/2007 @ 7:40pm
Mr Nichols....deal with it.

At this point, Edwards with his "I WOULD have voted for it" lines don't mean much. Compare it to Edwards when he WAS in the Senate.

He might still pull it out, but I wouldn't put it past him being any more anti-globalism as President, as he was as Senator. He's simply trying to run to the Left of HRC and BO.

Posted by Mask at 12/04/2007 @ 8:45pm
Obama and HRC are part and parcel of the War Party and by the vote in the Senate I see 80% of the Senators are too. Our neoliberal trade policy backed by our 700 military bases and a cheerleading Mega Media is not going away any time soon. This country is headed for facsism and the Homegrown Terrorist Act Proves it !

Trouble for them is we are going into a deep recession or depression and all the chips will be on the table when this economy implodes with bad debt causing severe unemployment and homelessness.

Posted by mmckinl at 12/04/2007 @ 9:01pm
Posted by MMCKINL 12/04/2007 @ 9:01pm

The man from Hercules has been readin' his Counterpunch!

Cheers to that.

And here's hoping that the forbidding forecast for the future is freakishly false. I'm whistling along my wary way with more than just a little trepidation.

Posted by b_kool_66 at 12/04/2007 @ 9:17pm
The reason they weren't in the Senate to vote was because they were in Iowa participating in the NPR debate.

Posted by Omaya at 12/04/2007 @ 10:02pm
Posted by MMCKINL 12/04/2007 @ 9:01pm |

And yet, despite your dire prediction....willing to bet $1000....

you have NO, as in zero, plans on moving.....right?

Posted by Mask at 12/04/2007 @ 10:31pm
NO, as in zero

Posted by MASK 12/04/2007 @ 10:31pm

really cumbuckets, is no plans the same as zero plans?

Bwah Ha HA Ha Ha Ha

because after all you did used to think to do meant to fix. And, it would be terrible if any of us were left with the understanding that you thought no plans really meant one or more plans.

Ha Ha ha Ha Hah ah ah aH AH aH aH a haH ah aH ah ah aH aH AHahAhAHHa

Posted by Will C. at 12/04/2007 @ 10:53pm
Posted by MASK 12/04/2007 @ 10:31pm |

I have no plans to move, and why should I move ? I'm not the type to turn tail. This is my country as well as theirs. I have accomplished my goal ... to be financiallly self sufficient. Sure if things get bad enough I will suffer too.

Which brings up the question : Why do you ask? Are you saying that I don't believe my own posts. kiss my behind ...

Posted by mmckinl at 12/04/2007 @ 10:56pm
Alas, this is all water under the bridge. The thing our Democratic Senators should have done, and long ago, would have been to craft a better trade agreement with Peru that both they and Sherrod Brown would now be able to affirm with a "yes" vote.

Having failed to do this -- and I suppose the necessity of having to get along with plutocrats would have made success in this case a dim possibility -- they should have presented themselves with Senator Brown to vote "no."

Frankly, I can't get too angry about Obama's and HRC's failure to show up to vote "yes" for another trade deal that puts investors first and workers last. I'm a little more irked at Biden and Dodd for failing to show up to vote "no."

By the way, thanks are due to John Nichols for drawing this matter to our attention. On other threads, people have accused Nichols of being a shameless shill for the Democratic front runners in the 2008 Presidential race. They are mistaken. Nichols just likes to deal out both credit and blame when they are due, and I think he is usually very much on target.

Posted by JakobFabian at 12/04/2007 @ 11:13pm
Today, Peru. Tomorrow, Panama and Columbia. Viva Free Trade! (and, score another one for Dubya, heh,heh)

Posted by davebarlett at 12/04/2007 @ 11:18pm
When are we going to connect the dots? The corporate Agenda controls our lives and the lives of most workers across the world. It is corporate driven trade policies that puts pressure on union jobs in the U.S. and super exploits workers in other countries and forces them to migrate with or without authorization. It is Corporative driven labor and employment laws that have stripped U.S. workers of the ability to build enough power to defend union jobs, let along increase membership. And it is coporate driven immigration laws that pits U.S. workers against immigrant workers. Witness the guest worker provisions in this Congress's defeated comprehensive immigration reform proposal.

I am not against trade or immigration. But, when our laws are written in the interests of corporations, we have to speak up.

Posted by Acosta at 12/05/2007 @ 12:36am
Posted by MMCKINL 12/04/2007 @ 10:56pm

Your posts are contradictory...

1. "This country is headed for facsism and the Homegrown Terrorist Act Proves it ! ....Trouble for them is we are going into a deep recession or depression and all the chips will be on the table when this economy implodes with bad debt causing severe unemployment and homelessness." ----Posted by MMCKINL 12/04/2007 @ 9:01pm

2. "I have no plans to move, and why should I move ? I'm not the type to turn tail. This is my country as well as theirs. I have accomplished my goal ... to be financiallly self sufficient. Sure if things get bad enough I will suffer too."----Posted by MMCKINL 12/04/2007 @ 10:56pm

What person would WILLINGLY subject themselves to "economic depression" and a "fascist state"? Unless

A. they are masochistic

B. they feel that THEY will be immune from said "depression" and "fascism"

C. they don't REALLY believe it will happen (or, more generously, that it can be stopped...in which case, the prediction is predicated on a WORST case scenario, not an inevitable one...thus contradicting the original statement).

Which is it?

Posted by Mask at 12/05/2007 @ 09:43am
Mask, you're an ass. MMCKINL says he/she is financially self-sufficient, so while a depression will cause suffering, survival should be assured. Also, while he/she sees fascism coming (perhaps hyperbolic, but hey, it's an opinion), he/she is willing to put up a fight for our liberties and lives. That should gain kudos, not an accusation of hypocracy or one of your typically small-minded, picky charges of self-contradiction.

Where have you gotten the idea that exile is such an easy option to take, either financially, emotionally or politically?

I respect editing and copy editing quite a bit, but really Mask, you have reduced close reading to a petty sport. When you feel passionate about an issue, like Bush/Cheney war mongering, you can wield your skills like a sword. But when you're just feeling clever and superior, you just end up inflicting irritating little paper cuts, except they irritate more than just your targets. I doubt you'll take my advice, but how about exercising some self-control and not responding everytime you feel the itch?

Posted by cka2nd at 12/05/2007 @ 10:24am
I doubt you'll take my advice, but how about exercising some self-control and not responding everytime you feel the itch?

~CKA2ND @ 10:24am

Can I get an AMEN?!

Posted by b_kool_66 at 12/05/2007 @ 10:50am
Posted by CKA2ND 12/05/2007 @ 10:24am

Posted by B_KOOL_66 12/05/2007 @ 10:50am

No, guys...here's the point. Bulls**t "apocalypse" predictions are just a way of sounding "cool".

It's just a watered-down version of PLUNGER-

BLOG | Posted 03/28/2007 @ 02:14am MoveOn Launches Online Townhalls by Ari Melber

"Time is up. World War III starts Friday – and it will coincide with conditions inside the US that lead to Martial Law, through either an Anthrax attack or a phony Bird Flu Outbreak.---Posted by PLUNGER 04/13/2007 @ 03:04am

or

BLOG | Posted 07/11/2007 @ 11:49pm Comments for "Bush's Royal Edict: Don't Cooperate With Congress" by John Nichols

"There will be no Dem in the White House.

In fact, there will be no elections at all. No Constitution either." ----Posted by PLUNGER 07/12/2007 @ 09:47am

MMCKINL gets to prognosticate a "depression" and "fascist state"...but when asked if he REALLY believes that, why isn't he planning on high-tailing it to Canada...he claims he has enough financial "self-sufficiency" to ride it out...

but what about the "fascist state"? Is he storing up weapons? Cacheing supplies? Organizing an "underground resistance"? Last time I checked that was the ONLY way to oppose a TRUE "fascist state"

Or could it be that he doesn't REALLY think a "fascist state" is REALLY coming...or as I GENEROUSLY granted, that he thinks it can be stopped electorally.

But if so, then the "Doom! Doom! I say" declarations are less impactful, and merely a modest warning of "What MIGHT be, if Hillary or some Dem isn't elected in 2008".

See, it's the crapola I can't stand. The idea that somebody gets to predict essentially the "end of the world" (an economically ruined America under sway of fascism)...and then not follow up with the NEXT LOGICAL QUESTION...."Okay, what are you planning on DOING about it...if you really believe that?"

Or getting criticized for not just "accepting it" and saying "Amen" to a bunch of throw-away lines.

Posted by Mask at 12/05/2007 @ 11:09am
Or getting criticized for not just "accepting it" and saying "Amen" to a bunch of throw-away lines.

~MASKOT @ 11:09am

Relax, Maskot. No one here is ordering you to accept or praise anyone. It'd just be soothing if you'd can the claptrap once in awhile, and focus on the wildfowl rather than companion hunter's pantlegs.

Posted by b_kool_66 at 12/05/2007 @ 11:26am
Thanks B_Kool for bringing Edwards into the conversation. It wouldn't take much research on anyone's part to know Edwards is very much against the Peru Trade deal. Edwards is spending his time campaigning to be elected into a position where he can truly bring about change rather than spend hundreds of hours working on a bill that IF it gets passed gets vetoed. The system is so broken and so corrupt that I can understand putting 100% of one's time & effort into bringing about change. BUT, and this is crucial, what voters should be doing is listening closely to what change each candidate if REALLY proposing. Anyone who seriously wants change is going to like Edwards.

We all know corporate owned media is doing their best to ignore Edwards who is so outspoken against corrupt big-business. But I don't understand The Nation. You would think this would be a publication that would give Edwards a fair shake. So far I have seen Edwards both mis-quoted and/or ignored.

Posted by mararmstrong at 12/05/2007 @ 11:32am
Posted by B_KOOL_66 12/05/2007 @ 11:26am

B_KOOL, if you'll scroll back, you'll see that I DID comment on the nature of the thread before taking MMCKINL to task.

But like PLUNGER's idiocies, I don't just let things go because the guy saying them SOUNDS like a compatriot.

Want to predict the Nazification of the United States...better explain what YOU plan on doing...in detail. Or else you're just a blogger throwing out neat lefty sound-bites...i.e. fluff.

Posted by Mask at 12/05/2007 @ 12:25pm
Posted by MARARMSTRONG 12/05/2007 @ 11:32am

How did Edwards vote on trade when he WAS in the Senate?

Posted by Mask at 12/05/2007 @ 12:25pm
Your criticism, or your requests for detailed summaries of particulars, would generally hold a lot more water, Mask, if you would occasionally offer the kind of details that you included in your response to Kool and I (not to be confused with Kool and the Gang, bdum, dum), even in the form of a question, up front, in your first post, rather than after you've been challenged to back up your initial hiccup.

I agree that "Chicken Little" kinds of predictions do no one any good. I would note, however, that MMCKINL said that he/she was staying to fight the rise of facism, while the kind of underground tactics that you outlined are more useful in assisting in its overthrow than in killing the fascist beast in its crib. Mobilizing the working class, blue, pink and white collar, to defend its rights, standard of living and organizations, and to beat back the fascist thugs and the cops who will try to back them up, these are some of the most important methods for preventing the rise of fascism. Spreading the word in the ranks of the military, among the enlisted soldiers, the non-coms and the lower ranks of the officer corps so as to undercut the ability of the generals to organize a military coup to support the fascists is probably also key.

I don't think we're at that point today. But you might have asked MMCKINL if they supported for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU or some of the other organizations, left, center, right or across the political spectrum, that have been fighting to defend the constitution from the depredations of the Bush Administration, the Federalist Society and their rather large Amen corner in the Demorcratic Party, especially in Congress.

Posted by cka2nd at 12/05/2007 @ 3:10pm
So what, John? It matters not a whit who showed or didn't show up for what vote. You'll be pimping whatever pro-war corporate Democrat is selected by the party elite next year. Fuck off with your fakeass concern about 'free' trade. No one is buying that for a second.

Posted by AlanSmithee at 12/05/2007 @ 5:33pm