Obama blasts Warren on TPP

[Beet]

Unusually, I still don't have an opinion on TPA, but trade is really where the left allows itself to wallow in Pat Buchananite-style xenophobia and flag-waving nationalism with impunity.

[Beet]

The leftist approach to foreign policy can be summed up as follows:

Terrorists plotting to kill us/dictators killing people? It's all America's fault! We're eeeevil imperialists, no wonder they hate us! The CIA!
Vietnamese worker wants a job for 56 cents an hour so America's poor can get a cheaper t-shirt? Oh no, can't have that. It's a corporatist conspiracy!

[Beet]

As to why Obama is so invested in this, let's face it, without this agreement, what had his much vaunted "pivot to Asia" really amounted to? He has a climate agreement with China consisting of measures they would likely have taken anyway. Besides that, from where I'm sitting, it has been pretty much a bust.

No one in the left has noticed, perhaps because they, too hate China. But American troops have been deployed to Australia and the Philippines, the U.S.-India anti-China alliance has advanced another step, and the Pentagon had drawn up "AirSea Battle", a complex offensive strategy whose main innovation seems to be bombing mainland China. Meanwhile, North Korea has more nukes and hostility than ever, and the incipient Cold War with China marches forward. He needs TPP to draw together his string of pearls on the Pacific Rim, and has been heavily dog whistling to that effect.

[Beet]

So, yeah. On the one side you have the New Cold Warriors (let's funnel money to Vietnam so they can buy our missiles! China = evil!) and on the other side you have the knee-jerk protectionists (OMGZ, cheap colored labor! Neoliberalism!). Then you have the "substance of the bill" folks like Averroes here, fighting a losing battle against ignorance. To be perfectly frank, there are arguments for or against the bill (TPA, which is up for a vote, not TPP; but this applies to TPP also) on substance but the balance of all of them added together does not tilt significantly enough in either direction for me to care much one way or the other. So it looks like tomorrow is going to be popcorn day for me. A heartfelt pox on both houses.

[Beet]

Are you calling me a "new Cold Warrior"? Because I support improving our relations with countries in Southeast Asia? Anyway...

And why are we so invested in improving relations with Southeast Asia all of a sudden?

[Beet]

Wyden is the leader of the "pro trade" Democrats and he wants a bunch of other bills advanced at the same time. This is just round 1.

[Beet]

Don't worry about the President's misogynist remarks, SJWs.  Sherrod Brown and NOW are on this.

Nice try, but there was a diary claiming this on Daily Kos and the overwhelming majority agreed there was no sexism. Brown and NOW are off base on this one.