A top Bernie Sanders ally over the weekend predicted a potential “Trump surge” in the Rust Belt and other areas devastated by globalist trade deals if Democrats have a floor fight at the convention over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Such a skirmish would highlight to the nation Hillary Clinton’s implicit support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, and it may hurt Democrats more than the 1968-style unrest party leaders have been fearing.
During a CNN appearance this weekend, Sanders ally Jonathan Tasini blasted Clinton allies on the platform committee for defeating a “one-sentence amendment” last week that simply stated that the Trans-Pacific Partnership “must not get a vote in this Congress or in future Sessions.”
Tasini said there is “great danger for the Democratic party” in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and even upstate New York.
“We are going to face a potential Trump surge in those areas,” Tasini ominously predicted.
On Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump continued to make TPP a focal point of his campaign, promising to withdraw the United States from the agreement. He spoke at length about how globalization has made the financial elite who fund politicians wealthy while wiping out America’s middle class. Trump added that those who have “rigged the system” will do anything to keep things the way they are. And he said that is why they support Clinton because they know nothing will change and they will keep accruing the benefits from the rigged globalist system.
Trump said America must “declare independence” from the financial and political elite by opposing deals like the TPP, which would be a “death blow for American manufacturing.”
Trump added that he “shamed” Clinton into lawyerly opposing the TPP and predicted that if Clinton wins the presidency, she would approve the deal and betray American workers for Wall Street like she has done throughout her career. Clinton, who effusively praised the TPP, has changed her tune in recent months, aware of how resonant trade has become on the campaign trail. A portion of her memoir in which she expressed support for the deal was even deleting from the paperback edition that was recently published.
Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton was "shamed" into opposing TPP when she saw my stance on it https://t.co/sswE89yApx https://t.co/dX2bqw0Y3G
— CNN (@CNN) June 28, 2016
Sanders said he was “disappointed and dismayed that allies of Hillary Clinton beat back Democratic Party platform proposals on trade.”
I'm disappointed and dismayed that allies of Hillary Clinton beat back Democratic Party platform proposals on trade.https://t.co/DUCZL7s4wh
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 25, 2016
Sanders vowed to reintroduce the language when the full platform committee meets on July 8 in Orlando and promised, “if we do not win in Orlando, we can carry them to the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.”
Tasini said Democrats opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership “must take a firm stand” against “TPP and so-called free trade” at the platform committee or “we will fight this on the convention floor.”
He added that these kinds of trade agreements have “devastated” the working class and predicted that many may “abandon” the party if it keeps supporting such trade agreements. Trump has predicted that many of Sanders’s supporters will vote for him over Clinton in the fall due to his positions on trade deals.
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