This is a bad state of affairs, if you are a regular worker (meaning, not someone worth millions of dollars who complains that her family is dead broke). Whether fast track becomes law may depend on the votes of 14 Senate Democrats–the very Democrats who abandoned workers just last month when the Senate passed fast track with the Trade Adjustment Assistance program attached.
Now, it’s game on again. Workers lives depend on 14 Senate Democrats who voted, in the last fast track vote,with Republicans to destroy middle class jobs.
That vote is coming again next week on a cloture vote.
And now this an easy question: Will Hillary Clinton call for the defeat of the cloture motion next week? That question needs to be asked every single day next week.
She is the one who can make a difference with a huge number of those 14 Senate Democrats.
If she stays silent, that will be a clear answer of what she believes.
Here is where we stand.
In May, 13 Democratic Senators voted against clotureon the original fast track bill. To be clear, had four of these Senators voted with the majority of the Democrats, fast track would have failed in the Senate:
On the final passage of the Senate bill, Ben Cardin (MD) voted for passage, though he had voted no on the cloture vote.Then, the bill went to the House. And, as we know, essentially, it initially stopped there because the House voted overwhelmingly against the Trade Assistance Adjustment (which I call “burial insurance”).
The House, then, passed fast track on its own.
That requires that the bill go back to the Senate for a vote on fast track. The gamesmenship on this is simple. The president and the party he has united behind him–THE REPUBLICAN PARTY–want the Democrats to vote first on fast track and, then vote on the TAA and, then, believe that the House–which rejected the TAA 126-302–will, then, pass the TAA bill.
Trust me, they say. This will happen.
For this to be believed, Democrats are going to have to trust John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Now, I have large tracts of Florida swampland for any of the Democrats who, in fact, proceed under the belief that they can trust these two gents (and I use “gents” quite loosely). But, Democrats have shown a willingness to be fooled in the past and have no clue how to play hardball.
But, you can put aside all the chess moves and speculation about how that might proceed because, today, there is a very simple question that needs to be asked:
Will Hillary Clinton call for a “NO” vote on cloture next week?
For all those people who buy the new, improved, “progressive” Clinton, this is a simple vote: are you with big corporations or are you with workers/labor/environmentalists?
Candidate Clinton said just yesterday:
On Thursday night, in an interview with Jon Ralston, Hillary Clinton declared that she would “probably” vote against giving Obama fast-track trade authority if she were still in the Senate, depending on the status of a companion measure assisting workers who lose jobs because of trade deals. But the pressure is still on Clinton to make it more clear where she stands.
She isn’t in the Senate. But, what is her position on the vote next week?Bernie Sanders has already spoke out clearly against fast track. So, has Martin O’Malley. But, in truth, Clinton has more leverage than the other two as it relates to those 14 votes. She has it in her power to shift enough votes to kill fast track.
She served with the 14.
Of the 14, ten have explicitly endorsed her candidacy as of April: Cardin, Cantwell, Feinstein, Heitkamp, Nelson, Kaine, McCaskill, Murray, Shaheen and Warner.
This is simple: call on those 10 to vote against cloture as a clear sign of what she “probably” would have done in the Senate.
It’s a clear vote.
It’s a clear choice.
