On Mon, 5 Aug 2002 08:02:34 -0400 "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org>
writes:
> There's been remarkably little commentary on the passage of Fast
> Track last
> week.
>
> How about a Thanks Ralph for the result. Notably, againt the
> argument of
> those who said Clinton made it more likely for trade agreeements to
> pass,
> this vote is proof of the opposite. Fast track failed under
> Clinton, but
> despite overwhelming Democratic opposition in the House, it picked
> up so
> many more GOP votes under Bush that it was pushed through to
> passage.
So are you trying to tell us that if Gore had been elected president then fast track would not have passed. On the contrary, I would say that if Gore had been in the White House, a lot more Democrats would have voted for it, while most of the Republicans would have voted for it anyway, regardless of who was in the White House. Remember, the votes on NAFTA and GATT under Clinton. If anything, on an issue like this a Democratic president will usually have an easier time pissing on his party base. After all, it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who abolished AFDC, not Reagan nor the elder Bush.
>
> Folks will no doubt bitch about individual Dems who crossed lines to
> support
> the legislation but this vote is as irrefutable empirical disproof
> of the
> argument that we gain ANYTHING from having a GOP President as it
> comes.
> Even on an issue where Gore and Bush agreed, the result was worse
> under Bush
> than it would have been under Gore.
Now, Nathan, you owe it to us, to explain how that follows. My reading of political history, is that it easier for Democratic presidents to get away with pissing on the interests of organized labor, African-Americans, or the poor in general than it is for Republican presidents. Back under Reagan and Bush I, liberal Democrats were willing to team up with progressive activists, to oppose many of the most reactionary policies of those administrations. Then when Clinton was president, these very same liberal Democrats were quite content to go to sleep, or at most to register muffled protests, when Clinton pushed through NAFTA and GATT, abolished AFDC, threatened civil liberties when he pushed through anti-terrorism legislation following the Oklahoma City bombing, and much, much more.
Jim F.
>
> Nathan Newman
> nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org
>
>
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