Trading Blows, Cont'd: The Word Goes Forth

In which we learn that the word has gone out about trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

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The conflict between the president and that part of the Democratic base represented by Senator Professor Warren -- and by Senator Sherrod Brown, and almost every labor leader, and the Electronic Frontier Association, etc. -- is not going away any time soon. Last week, the president mustered some disingenuous bafflegab in response to Democrats who oppose him on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the job-wrecking locomotive coming down the track to which the American middle class is tied. (Joan Walsh has a nice little bit of debunking, especially on the "This is not a secret agreement, children" bushwah.) However, it has become clear that the president's conference call with sympathetic journalists is having its desired effect. First, it is now permissable among liberals to tell SPW and her allies to "grow up," maturity being precisely measured by how much you trust the president and, as we know and as history has taught us, nothing ever can go wrong with developing public policy according to that delicate calculation.

But, more intriguing is this piece from Washington Monthly, which compares SPW unfavorably as a progressive heir to Ted Kennedy to...wait for it...Cory Booker. It does not begin promisingly.


Translation from the original Broderian Slatepitch: Watch as I bravely troll the children.

The piece makes the unremarkable -- but classically DLC-ish -- comparison based on Booker's purported ability to work "across the aisle." To wit:

It's interesting to note what these two have achieved in their short history in the Senate. On Warren's web site, you can see what bills she has sponsored. There is one of note having to do with student loan refinancing. The other three appear to be symbolic in nature. Looking a bit deeper, we can see who Warren has recruited to be cosponsors on the bill related to student loans. The list is long…all Democrats. On the other issue Senator Warren is known for - going after Wall Street - she sponsored the "21st Century Glass-Steagall Act of 2013," which was never voted out of committee and has not been re-inroduced. Booker has made criminal justice reform his signature issue. On that front, he has cosponsored legislation called the REDEEM Act and the Smarter Sentencing Act. The former takes six steps to help those coming out of the criminal justice system be more successful in their attempts to re-intigrate back into society. The latter gives judges more leeway to deviate from mandatory minimum sentences. Other than tackling different issues (all of which are important to progressives) the other big difference is that Booker is cosponsoring the REDEEM act with Republican Senator Rand Paul. The list of cosponsors on the Smarter Sentencing Act is nothing short of mind-blowing: Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Dick Durban (D-IL), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

Some minds are easily blown, I guess.


Here is the answer. The answer is C) None Of The Above. Of course, loons like Paul and Lee have signed onto this bill. Neither one of them has anything to lose. Lee is in a safe Republican seat and Aqua Buddha's running for president. But to believe that either one of them is any more influential within their caucus than Warren is within hers on the subject of reining in Wall Street is to drift into fantasyland. Within the Republican centers of power, "Criminal justice reform" does not exist as an actual issue. It exists as dumbshow in an attempt to convince minority voters that the Republican party is on their side. If the Republican party really were interested in actually reforming the criminal justice system in this country, it would have gotten behind then-Senator Jim Webb's attempt to do that during his one term in the Senate. Instead, it filibustered even the possibility of a commission to study the problem. When either the REDEEM Act or the Smarter Sentencing Act come to a vote, then I'll take the point.

Until then, let's compare apples to apples. SPW's single-minded focus in the Senate has been to correct the systemic corruption in the financial system of the United States. At best, Booker has been lukewarm on the issue.At worst, he's a Wall Street sublet. Let us imagine, just for argument's sake, because both bills are as dormant as Kelsey's nuts at the moment, that the REDEEM Act and the revived Glass-Steagall regulations both came to a vote in the Senate. I have no doubt that SPW would vote enthusiastically for both bills. I don't believe Cory Booker would. And to define the late Ted Kennedy's career merely as a guy who worked successfully with Republicans, as this piece's conclusion does, is to profane his memory, and to miss almost all of what gave him his power in the first place. This, for example, is a speech that I can't imagine Cory Booker ever making, but I can hear SPW saying it.

What is the price, we ask the other side. What is the price you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and American business? How many billion dollars more? When does the greed stop?

That speech might not have moved a single vote. But that wasn't its point, was it?

The last few days have been fascinating. The fast-tracking of the TPP seems more than a little imperiled. This is the issue on which the president has decided to be openly hostile -- and marginally dishonest -- toward people in his own party. It also seems to be the issue on which he seems to want to bring people like SPW and Sherrod Brown to heel. It's time to ding up the halo a little bit. Yeah, good luck with that.

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