Fact Check of a ‘Fact Check’: Bill Clinton and NAFTA
I know it’s the last two weeks of the Presidential campaign, so truth and facts have a tendency to go by the wayside for political expediency. As a child of the 90’s, one of my earliest political memories was the advent of NAFTA. It was then I decided that I could never go into electoral politics as this was touted as an example of the two political parties working together. Supposedly liberal President Bill Clinton worked with the Republican Party, and passed the agreement that the Republican’s could have never dreamed to actually get passed and signed alone.
In response to the resurgence of “populist” complaints against legislation that many claim killed good paying jobs (many union) and at the same time set up sweatshops in the country to our south the usual Democratic Party front websites, like Politicususa.com, FreakOutNation and surprisingly now, Rachel Maddow. (Apologies for linking to DailyCaller, but they’re correct on this issue)
The North American Free Trade Agreement has been if nothing else, controversial from it’s inception. So in 2016, 22 years into it, and with a new candidate running who shares the last name of the man who was President when it started – it should be no surprise that NAFTA has once again come to haunt the Democratic Party.
Sorry kids, Trump’s right on this one. Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, need to own up to this one. Of course I have a feeling we’ll be having this same discussion in 30 years when it comes to TPP.
So who’s lying? All these websites and this facebook video or President Bill Clinton in this speech he gave December 8, 1993?
I think that’s the giant sucking sound of votes in Ohio.
Zach-
You have something seriously wrong here. Mr Clinton was never a liberal and if anyone ever thought he was “supposedly’ they weren’t paying attention.
It’s not a joke to say he was the best Republican President since Eisenhower- its the truth.
The “New Democrats” or Centrists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats
were and are a very specific part of the Democratic party in recent years . They have wielded most of the party power for quite awhile.
Some of the luster of the ND rise is BS pandering to truly liberal ideals and some of it is building a house of cards around capitalism as best suited to sort out human activities
The NDs were enamored of neoliberal economic ideas and assumed tacking “fair playing field” lingo onto everything would make the disenfranchisement of poor and minorities all that was needed to adjust capitalism’s excesses. Over time they were pretty much proved wrong with rising income inequality, out of control deregulation of financial institutions from the administrations of Mr Reagan through Mr Clinton which dang near sunk us, and increasing the disconnect between Americans- most notably to me in the area of race relations. Look at the studies about “colorblind” policies and “supposedly” liberal responses about why them dang brown people are still poor.
The groundwork for NAFTA was laid well before Mr Clinton and he ran with it as he seriously thought it would help a number of things (It has been mixed in reality – it has been hella hard on Mexico BTW.) but it is horsepunky to accept Mr Trump’s description of who is to blame and what the effects were/are.
The enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend- nor are they right because they stumble on a piece of the picture.
I swear this might be the closest Mr Trump has ever come to finding his own hiney with both hands . Pffft!
There is another thing here Americans need to get loud and clear about. We bought the goods. We bought the stuff which took jobs away ( the ones which can be tied to NAFTA). We stood by while unions got done under, we stood by while ” reallocation of financial resources” sucked folks out of well paying jobs into the service sector. We did this to ourselves in our quest for cheap goods- the right to fill our lives up to the ceiling with geegaws. Us We did it.
We got greedy about making a “killing” on the stock market and in real estate. Us We did it.
If we’re going to grow liberal policies and plans , we need to get real about what our own lil hands have done . Us. We.