TPP, Obama's "NAFTA on Steroids" Fails First Senate Test

TPP, Obama's "NAFTA on Steroids" Fails First Senate Test

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“TPP was to be the crowning infrastructural achievement of the Obama era – payback to the One Percent for the first billion-dollar presidency.”

President Obama’s brazen bid to transfer the reins of international governance to the Wall Streets of the world suffered a devastating setback at the hands of his own party, on Tuesday. All but one Democratic senator rejected giving the president “fast track” authority to ram through a Trans Pacific Partnership treaty (TPP) that would put corporations on an equal or higher legal footing than sovereign nations. The 52 to 45 vote, well short of the 60 needed for passage, was perhaps the most dramatic display yet of the center-right nature of the Obama presidency. On this issue, we saw a Democratic president backed almost entirely by Republicans. Obama is even more dependent on the GOP on trade issues than was his mentor, Bill Clinton, who pushed through the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 with only a minority of Democrats in favor. The Republican leadership of the U.S. House is thought to be unlikely to bring “fast track” to a vote on the floor without majority support.

Passage of NAFTA was the first big victory for the first “New Democrat” president. In the 1980s, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton had helped found the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), along with Tennessee’s Al Gore and other white southerners, to counter the power of Blacks and labor in the party. The DLC quickly became the Democrats’ major pocket for corporate contributions, thus giving a decisive advantage to the party’s reinvigorated right wing and its young leader, the “Man from Hope.” Clinton immediately set about repaying Wall Street, first with NAFTA and ultimately through the DLC-GOP dismantling of Glass-Steagall restrictions on banking.

Barack Obama was the second Democratic Leadership Council president, a direct political descendant of Clinton. Obama was recruited and vetted by the DLC’s New Democrat Coalition in the early stages of his race for the senatorial nomination in Illinois, in 2003 – although he repeatedly lied about his membership. Immediately on entering the White House, Obama reinstalled Clinton’s Glass-Steagall wrecking crew as his economic policy team. Just as NAFTA inaugurated the Clinton era, TPP (and the pending Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP) was to be the crowning infrastructural achievement of the Obama era – payback to the One Percent for the first billion-dollar presidency.

“Republican lawmakers are overwhelmingly intent on serving their Wall Street masters, while Democrats are now constrained by union and grass-roots truth-tellers.”

Hillary Clinton, contemplating a $2 billion campaign, is positioned to be the third DLC president – if she can figure out a way to distance herself from the TPP sink-hole that is swallowing Obama. This will require prodigious feats of lying, since there are no bigger or more dedicated corporate whores in existence than the Clintons. The truly pitiful specimens are the Democrats that are begging – demanding! – that she lie to them about her support for TPP, so that they can campaign for her with a clear conscience.

Until relatively recently, polls showed rank and file Democrats favored Obama’s trade deals. Their sentiments had nothing to do with the substance of the proposed treaties, since the whole process is classified. Rather, it was purely reflexive support for Obama. According to an April, 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of Democrats thought the European TTIP deal was “a good thing,” while only 44 percent of Republicans did. The actual alignment of the political parties is exactly opposite, with Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly intent on serving their Wall Street masters, while Democrats are now constrained by union and grass-roots truth-tellers.

There is one group of Democratic House members, however, that Obama can depend on: his old comrades, the New Democrats – and, in particular, the right-wing faction in the Congressional Black Caucus. These are the worst of the worst, the crowd that used to be led by former Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr., the last chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. (The DLC went out of business in 2009, having fulfilled its historical mission on behalf of the Lords of Capital. Their New Democratic Coalition affiliate, remains.)

“The strongest rightwing influence on Black Caucus behavior is the presence of a Black-led, center-right administration.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the shameless corporate servant from Queens, New York, has been the top New Democrat in the Black Caucus since Albert Wynn lost his suburban Maryland seat. Wynn was one of four Blacks to vote for George Bush’s Iraq War Powers, along with Bill Jefferson of Louisiana, Sanford Bishop, of Georgia, and Harold Ford. Meeks took Wynn’s place as the Caucus’ corporate bagman, and is joined by Andre Carson, of Indianapolis, Terri Sewell, of Alabama, Cedric Richmond, of Louisiana, and David Scott, of suburban Atlanta. Sewell replaced Artur Davis, among the worst Black congressman of modern times, based on the CBC Monitor Report Card, often second only to Harold Ford Jr. Georgia’s David Scott consistently tied for second-worst place. Cedric Richmond replaced the infinitely corrupt, war mongering Bill Jefferson, from New Orleans – which proves that the crooked party makes the man, not the other way around.

Georgia’s Sanford Bishop, the pro-war member who was always near the bottom of the Report Card, is a longtime member of the Blue Dog Coalition, where he has now had the company of fellow Black Georgian troglodyte David Scott.

Congressman Meeks and three white Democrat and Republican colleagues have formed a “Friends of TPP” Caucus that will probably have little effect on the outcome of the deal, but will further ingratiate Meeks with Wall Street money-buckets, encouraging deepening corporate domination of a Black Caucus whose reliable “right wing” consisted of only one member – Harold Ford Jr. – prior to the year 2000. The corporate-loyal faction can now often claim a majority of the Caucus (as it does on telecommunications-related legislation), no matter who is president. However, the strongest rightwing influence on Black Caucus behavior is the presence of a Black-led, center-right administration. Half of the Black Caucus voted to continue the unprovoked, illegal bombing of Libya, in 2011, because the criminal bomber in the White House was a Black man. Black Agenda Report intends to revive the CBC Monitor Report Card to tabulate the ongoing rightward drift of the Congressional Black Caucus, beginning with its behavior on the Trans Pacific Partnership.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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