With both US Presidential candidates – the Democratic Party’s Hilary Clinton the Republican Party’s Donald Trump – firming in their opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, President Obama is readying for one last attempt to get the TPP passed through Congress during the ‘lame duck’ session after November’s Presidential Election, organising 30 events over the Congressional recess to garner support for the deal. From the New York Times:
Although the administration’s push will begin in September, no vote on the accord will occur before the election…
Mr. Obama does not want to make trouble for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton…
Yet the administration does not plan to be silent or forfeit hopes for a postelection vote.
Mr. Obama, who advocated the trade accord in a pre-vacation news conference, will rejoin the debate during an early September trip to Asia. Cabinet officials will fan out to promote the agreement…
Of the 60 senators who supported the fast-track bill last year, at least five have now come out against T.P.P. It will need at least 50 votes, assuming Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is the tiebreaker.
“There is a big gap between the rhetoric of the campaign and even in what you see in the polls,” Mr. Froman said. “It’s going to be hard. But the votes will be there.”
Meanwhile, The Hill has reported that President Obama’s campaigning for the TPP could cost the Democrats votes at the upcoming elections:
This agreement is especially despised among the white working-class voters who have made up the major swing vote in most of the presidential elections of the past four decades.
Trump is far behind Clinton in the polls, and it seems unlikely that Obama would have launched a public campaign of this magnitude for the TPP in the heat of an election season if the race were looking like a serious contest. But there is more at stake: millions of potential Republican voters will stay home in November if Trump is losing by a wide margin. Many others will stay home simply because they don’t like him. But many of these disaffected voters could be rallied to the polls if they think that Clinton, and her party, are going to bring them another failed “trade” agreement. (On the other side, some potential Democratic voters could abstain or switch sides for the same reasons). All this could make the difference between the Democrats taking the Senate, and in a big enough landslide, even the House of Representatives.
The article goes on to explain how Congress is likely to pass the TPP during the ‘lame duck’ session as out-going members “sell their votes” in favour of the TPP in a bid to gain lucrative private sector employment post-politics – a form of tacit corruption:
…the average number of representatives who left after the last three elections was about 80.
Most of these people will be looking for a job, preferably one that can pay them more than $1 million a year…
So there you have it: It is all about corruption, and this is about as unadulterated as corruption gets in our hallowed democracy, other than literal cash under a literal table. These are the people whom Obama needs to pass this agreement, and the window between Nov. 9 and Jan. 3 is the only time that they are available to sell their votes to future employers without any personal political consequences whatsoever. The only time that the electorate can be rendered so completely irrelevant, if Obama can pull this off.
So much for representative democracy!
