I do not want Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee.

[Savannahmann]

450. The reason nobody is mentioning Biden, or Dodd, or anyone else is the context.

They are not reported as even considering the Presidency. Biden is tossed out now and then, but he's made no noise himself about it, and no one close to him as alluded to another run on the White House. Generally speaking, it seems as though he doesn't have the support to even consider it. The reasons why are really not germain, but let's agree that the context of this is the judgement and position of potential Presidential Candidate.

If the Unions, in this instance specifically the AFL-CIO are willing to threaten a Senator, what gain would they have in supporting a Presidential Candidate with the same position and an even worse history on trade issues that undeniably cost jobs? Let's look at it logically since we're going to agree that the Unions are run by people who are pretty damned smart.

It takes a two thirds majority to get such a treaty through the Senate. Right now, Republicans control the Senate. So taking the White House, and putting a politician there who is at best ambivalent to Union concerns is a minimal gain at best for the Union. On the other hand, taking those resources, money, manpower, and mailing lists and sinking them into a few vulnerable Senate Seats means that the Union can have a lot more influence in the Senate. If they can get the Democrats in control, then even the most anti-Union pro free trade Republican in the White House is powerless to significantly harm the Unions. The Democratically controlled and Union Friendly Senate would provide a powerful check to the aspirations of the kings of outsourcing. Thus the Unions would protect their members, and protect their positions. That is a far smarter use of limited resources than throwing everything at a single candidate who has a long history of supporting free trade that has cost more than a million jobs so far.

Now, if Biden were to throw his hat into the ring, which again, we have no indication that he will at this time, then his record would similarly be scrutinized by people. You don't have to be right all the time to be in Politics, but you have to recognize when you make mistakes, and move to correct those mistakes. Let's use Doctors as an example. The show House MD was popular, and in it House made mistake after mistake trying to diagnose a patient with some rare condition. At the end of almost every single episode, he found the right answer, and saved the life of the patient. That is how Doctors work. Most of the time they aren't certain that they are providing the right treatment, and they check to see if it is working. If not, they try something else.

NAFTA cost at least a million jobs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta-at-20-one-million-u_b_4550207.html

It also helped drive wages down. It made it profitable for companies to spend billions in Mexico setting up factories and plants and then shipping the products to the US. Ford, GM, Toyota, and now Audi are but a fraction of the companies that moved high paying jobs out of the country.

Farm jobs lost. Skilled labor jobs, lost. So the wise wo/man who looks at this must admit that the free trade angle doesn't do what it was advertised as doing. They would examine the results and then withdraw any support for future agreements that would certainly have similar results. A child may touch the hot pot of water once in the process of of learning what hot is. If the child touches the pot several times, you have a problem that could be a learning disability. So what does that say about a politician who seems either reluctant, or unwilling to learn?

The job of President is about judgement, and about vision. The past is what gives us an idea of what the judgement of the person is like. Again, you don't have to be perfect, but you do have to be willing to admit you made a mistake. We're all humans, and we all are making mistakes. We know that, and we admit we made mistakes. If Hillary when confronted with the TPP situation, had said that she was uncomfortable with it, that would be one thing to consider. Then instead of a pattern of support for killing jobs, we would have a person who tried something, and found it didn't work. CAFTA aside, we don't have that. I always suspected that the argument against CAFTA had more to do with Bush being in the White House than opposition to unfair trade agreements.

I don't blame people for making an honest mistake. For taking actions they thought would turn out one way with the best of intentions. I do blame people for not learning from those mistakes. Because learning from our mistakes is supposed to be part of growing, and improving.