No guess for you!
Why should they need to coherently explain any of this? They have real lives in the real world. They trusted and voted. They are as well informed to the extent that they need be. This is stuff for political nerds. How much do you know, political nerd person, about types of welding and specific brazing alloys, about double entry accounting, about OCami, Scala, Dart, Haskell and Julia types of programming and scripts?
TPA trade promotion authority
allow president to finalize agreements with Pacific Rim nations and European Union
TAA trade adjustment assistance
help workers displaced by trade. Support collapsed. Dems and Unions overwhelming supported in the past, now less than 25% support.
TPP trans Pacific partnership
massive trade agreement negotiated in secret between twelve countries that apparently expands NAFTA and apparently modeled on failed Korea FTA, provides incentives for offshore jobs, imposes limits on food safety, environment. Forces states to comply with TPP rules. Elevates foreign firms to status of sovereign nations. Establishes tribunals. This information is poor due to secrecy, dribbles out in leaks.
Unions flipped on TAA blowing TPA with it, linked as it is with TPA. That's what this is about.
Noteworthy, I think, to me it is, maybe not to you. It shows how things are done at very very low levels of prestige inducement. They didn't work but they were tried, meaning they did work at one time and will again but just not now.
The White House has been wooing Democrats for weeks, even dangling the trappings of the presidency—Oval Office visits, rides on Air Force One, phone calls galore—in a way that’s been rare for Obama. (The D.C. pundit class has long urged him to engage in this sort of maneuvering to advance his legislative agenda; it doesn’t seem to have made much difference.) On Thursday evening, Obama made a surprise visit to the Congressional Baseball Game, where he smiled for pictures with lawmakers and reportedly button-holed Pelosi for 15 minutes on the trade bill.
I'm filed with glee that simple nonsense didn't work and drenched with despair that it's SOP and usually does work.
It is a dramatic scene that will live on in history and in drama. It's been seen before. Pelosi steps out from a gaggle of white-robed sandal-wearing senators and representatives as Obama passes on the capitol steps and stabs Obama right in the chest, then the other robed congress people lunge forward after her and jab the stricken bleeding dying emperor. They are all actors, all bent over the figure on stage they pull out ribbons of red and toss them in all directions as squirting blood filling the air and settling on the stage starkly red against white.
Russell Berman, The Atlantic, A Big Win for Big Labor
