Breaking: Area politicians craft insincere pitches to voters

Mon, 02/25/2008 - 12:15pm

The Politico's Ben Smith blogs about the above anti-Obama mailer that's making the rounds and makes a good point:

The odd thing here is that both Clinton and Obama come from the pro-trade wing of the party. Both have, in less heated moments, defended free trade in theory, and neither wants to repeal Nafta.

But when in Ohio, you argue about who hates trade more.

Politicians pandering to voters? Shocking.

Blake Hounshell | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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NAFTA's real importance?

by cigrainger on Mon, 02/25/2008 - 1:01pm

I find the public opinion about NAFTA very interesting, considering it really has done very little for or to American industry. It primarily was aimed at improving Mexico's economy from my understanding, and has arguably only done so in the North.

When attempting to undercut Hillary's "working class" base in Washington state, Obama went after NAFTA (or, more accurately her support of it) -- obviously a legacy of her husband. I found it to be a wise move, because NAFTA is largely unimportant in real economic policy but holds a lot of weight with voters.

So why all the hype about it? Does the average American (and I'm American) really know so little about macroeconomics that they truly think NAFTA is costing them jobs?

Also, what's with all the smear attempts at Obama? To be fair, this is a political/economic smear and is relatively fair game, but between allegations of gay sex, recent cocaine use, Satanism, being a Muslim (as if that should matter), speech plagiarism, etc, I feel like crying on YouTube "Leave Barack alone!"