In 2008, Mr Obama said that rural small town Pennsylvanians "...get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
You should have tried having an "Obama for President" sign in your front yard in rural Pennsylvania at the time... it was not pleasant.
There are many noble accomplishments in President Obama's legacy. The TPP will not be one of them. For a man who has asked us to be on the right side of history, a man who sent the first US observer to the International Court, a man who vowed to end the use of torture without exception, Mr. Obama perplexes me with behind-closed-doors global free trade wheeling and dealing. How did a former Constitutional law professor get so far removed from ordinary American citizens?
As a rural Pennsylvanian, I have no gun. I am not religious. I speak fluent Spanish (más o menos). I understand not all immigrants are Latino -- my own grandfather was born in Northern England. As a woman raised in the Quaker state's Amish country, I'm committed to nonviolence and the decent and humane treatment of all people. Equal rights and justice have been life long values of mine.
But I do cling to my anti-trade sentiment, because, as Moyer & Company reports,
[While] increasing trade boosts corporate profits and the incomes of those well positioned in the global economy, it also accounts for net job losses and increasing economic inequality in highly developed economies
and
...transfer[s] power from governments — including democratically elected governments — to corporations.
I'm not a Republican, not a socialist, and not a tea frutarian. It's not xenophobic nationalism or rural small-minded bitterness, and it's not the economy, stupid (contrary to what our NAFTA-signing ex-president Clinton once sniped, arguably at the urging of party strategists -- I suppose Mr. Obama's rural PA quote was likely ghost-written). I'm an American, and I care about our democracy. It's common sense.