If we had a better, less Blitzerized media (or if there'd been fewer Hillary supporters in the audience), this would be the iconic moment of the debate. And who knows? It might still become just that.
After our memories of the political pornography peddled by CNN have faded, we might still be able to recall Hillary laughing after she was asked if Ross Perot had been right about NAFTA. Surely she will claim that she was laughing not at the pain that NAFTA has caused, the million lost jobs, but at the funny little man with the charts and the big ears.
John Edwards is having none of it, and why should he? Hillary still supports the NAFTA-approach to trade.
Today Edwards campaign chairman David Bonior, Maine Congressman Mike Michaud, Tom Conway of the Steelworkers, and Roger Tauss of the Transport Workers held a conference call to discuss The Laugh. Here's a report from MSNBC:
In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Edwards’ staff and supporters expressed their concern over Clinton’s response to a NAFTA question at last night’s Democratic debate. “For us, for me, this is not a laughing matter. We lost over one million good-paying manufacturing jobs in this country,” began former Michigan Rep. David Bonior, who serves as Edwards’ campaign manager. “John Edwards understands this instinctively because he grew up with this.”
And here's the candidate himself on The Laugh:
Last night's debate was important because it showed distinctions between the candidates on issues that really matter to Americans. One moment from the debate stuck with me – when Senator Clinton was asked about NAFTA and she tried to joke about charts and laugh about it.
"For the one million Americans who lost their jobs because of NAFTA, this isn't a laughing matter. And for me, this isn't about charts – it's very personal. I grew up in a mill town, and today in hundreds of towns just like Robbins, people's lives hang in the balance because of bad trade agreements. When that mill closed down, it meant less food on the table, not being able to pay for your home or your health care, and financial hardships that were devastating for families.
"One of the most important choices for Democrats in this election is whether we're going to continue to pay lip service to workers while we put the profits of big multinational corporations first, or if we're finally going to show some backbone and strength and stand up for American workers.
This video, courtesy of David Sirota, captures The Laugh pretty well:
Now, one might--might--be tempted to dimiss Hillary's dismissal of NAFTA if she'd been a consistent critic of NAFTA-style free-trade. But she championed NAFTA for many years. For example, in 1998 (the same year that Edwards ran for the Senate and opposed NAFTA), she spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos andpraised corporations for mounting:
a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of Nafta...It is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun.
Finished the job? Umm-kay. There's a reason that the country's leading Democratic opponent of fair trade, Bob Rubin, had endorsed her. In fact, he announced that he would back her on the same day that she came out in support of the "free" trade deal with Peru--which Edwards opposes along with virtually every major union, environment group, and small business organization. She says she'll support a time-out in trade agreements when she's president, yet she supports the Peru deal now. Does that make sense? It's like saying you support a moratorium on the death penalty--beginning next year.
The Peru Trade deal is obstensibly different from NAFTA-style deal in that it contains some labor and environmental protections, but no less a supporter of "free" trade, the Chamber of Commerce, has said that the protections would not be enforceable, or enforced. And it's no wonder: the Bush administration would be charged with enforcing them. SaysJohn Sweeney of the AFL-CIO:
We are justifiably skeptical about whether the Bush Administration will faithfully enforce the newly negotiated labor and environment protections, since this administration has done such a poor job enforcing these provisions in existing trade agreements.
Bush can be trusted, right?
And as it bad as this deal would be for American workers, it would be devastating for Peruvian farmers, who would be forced to compete against heavily subsidized American farmers. It's so threatening that "four million workers and small-scale Peruvian farmers went on strike this summer to protest the impact that the FTA would have on rural communities there."
Edwards opposes not only the Peru deal but also the three other deals worked out in secret negotiations between Congressional Democrats and the Bush Administration. Bush, he says, is trying to "expand the NAFTA approach to Peru, Panama, South Korean, and Columbia." Edwards, drawing a line in the sand, says Congress must first take care of workers:
Congress should not pass further trade deals without first taking steps to address the stagnant wages and insecurity caused by globalization. Congress needs to adopt universal health care, reform the tax code, strengthen unions, and expand and renew trade adjustment assistance.
As for NAFTA, Edwards says that he would try to fix it, but if that cannot be done, he would repeal it. Edwards has become the country's most prominent advocate of fair trade. That's one big reason, maybe the biggest, that I want him to be president.