http://commentsfromleftfield.com/2007/11/edwards-takes-stand-against-trade-deals-obama-supports-and-misrepresents-them#more-2906(snip)
For me, though, the capper came when John Edwards explicitly and without reservation attacked the secret trade deals the Democratic leadership made with the White House, horrendous deals that are nothing more than permission for corporate theft and gutting worker protections and environmental safeguards on a hemispheric scale. Not only did Obama not join Edwards’ denunciation, not only did he make a strong statement supporting the Peru deal specifically, he went on to misrepresent it.
(snip)
While the other issues may be dicier and less telling than they seem to be, this one is not. Obama has bought the DLC line on the trade deals hook, line, and sinker - a line that comes straight from
DLC Founder Al From, who works for Tom Donahue, President of the US Chamber of Commerce and a rabid conservative corporatist. (Read the whole article on Donahue. It’s bloody scary.) It’s simply inconceivable that Obama doesn’t know where the message he’s parroting originated, or that the wording of the deal itself was cooked up between the White House and From’s buddies, the Gang of Six and the DLC/BD Alliance that rules the current Democratic leadership.
Worse, Obama’s misrepresentations of the Peru deal must be deliberate. He can’t possibly be so ignorant that he actually thinks the worker protections that were taken out are still there or that unions which have been vocal about their opposition are actually in favor. That strains credulity way past the breaking point and into conservative/BushCo LaLaLand.
I’ve been on-again/off-again about Obama ever since his breakout speech at the Democratic national Convention three years ago. It was an impassioned speech by a brilliant orator BUT…it didn’t contain a single sentence that would disturb a hair on Al From’s head. There was an undercurrent that both eRobin and I read as what I can only describe as an audition for serious consideration by the party powers. Rob said something to the effect that he had managed to hit all the DLC talking points without making it obvious that’s what he was doing. I thought then that she might be right.