Carter was no liberal

[AZ Progressive]

In fact, he was a supporter of NAFTA:


http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Jimmy_Carter_Free_Trade.htm

1993: Called members of Congress to push for NAFTA

November offered two examples of sound policy and questionable politics. After Al Gore plainly bested Ross Perot in a heavily watched TV debate in NAFTA, it passed the House, 234-200. Three days later the Senate followed suit, 61-38. Al and I had called or seen two hundred members of Congress, and the cabinet had made nine hundred calls. President Carter also helped, calling members of Congress all day long for a week. We also had to make deals on a wide range of issues; the lobbying effort for NAFTA looked even more like sausage making than the budget fight had. Our whole team had won a great economic and political victory for America, but like the budget, it came at a high price, dividing our party in Congress and infuriating many of our strongest supporters in the labor movement.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.557 , Jun 21, 2004

[onehandle]

1. And this is relevant right at this moment because?... nt

[AZ Progressive]

2. Just realizing how many "Democrats" sold us down the river with NAFTA...

A time of reflection during this TPP fight...

[elleng]

3. because it's not!

Thanks for asking.

[pampango]

4. Democrats poll as more supportive of all trade agreements than are republicans.

Carter is just a typical Democrat.

[Major Nikon]

5. If you come up with enough litmus tests, nobody is a liberal

[prayin4rain]

6. NAFTA was an honest mistake.

Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, the TPP is a deliberate screwing.

[Recursion]

9. No. This crap about NAFTA is ridiculous. The late 1990s and early 2000s were great years for workers

From the passage of NAFTA until W fucked up the economy by cutting taxes, workers made gains in every single metric. Unemployment went down. Labor force participation went up. Median wages went up. The median income in all five quintiles went up. Exports increased. Contrary to the lie you'll see repeated here over and over, US manufacturing output increased. I have no idea why people make such a point of ignoring what actually happened just because somebody told them that "neoliberals" (or whatever the catch phrase is this week) like trade.

And before anybody trots out the old "it was the tech boom" horse:

1. NAFTA was part of the tech boom (we could export more chips)
2. The tech boom destroyed more jobs than a trade agreement could ever dream of doing. (Remember travel agents? How many are there now? Hell, most of the manufacturing job losses in the interim were from automation -- part of the tech boom. You know this because again US manufacturing output went up not down after NAFTA's passage. US factories make more and more, using fewer workers to do it. Just like our farms started doing 100 years ago. But why doesn't anybody call for a rolling back of the 1990s technology boom?)

[uppityperson]

7. Carter was a liberal who, like most people, in retrospect, made mistakes. eom

[Buzz Clik]

8. Yep. Under the bus he goes.

That bus is having a bumpy ride. The only Democrat elected in the last 40 years that we have not thrown under the bus is Bernie Sanders.