Memo to progressives: Hillary Clinton is lying to you: Salon THURSDAY, OCT 8, 2015 01:00 PM

[UglyGreed]

All politicians flip-flop. But Clinton's TPP opposition marks one of the more brazen U-turns in recent history

Nothing says “election season” quite like politicians dumping their long-held policy stances overboard in a desperate gambit to gain votes, but you have to hand it to Hillary Clinton. With her recently-announced opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, she’s making one of the more brazen flip-flops in recent political memory.

What’s so amazing about Clinton’s newfound opposition to the highly controversial deal is the jaw-dropping transparency of the move. It’s such an open ploy to counter both the rise of staunch TPP critic Bernie Sanders and the possible entry of TPP supporter Joe Biden that it’s almost refreshing in its shamelessness.

Let’s be clear here: Hillary Clinton is lying when she says she’s opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There is absolutely nothing in either her political background or her political history to suggest that she has any real substantive problems with the deal. After all, she comes from the generation of Democratic politicians—the most prominent member of which was a certain other Clinton—who made their embrace of free trade deals like NAFTA one of the centerpieces of their efforts to yank the Democratic Party rightward. As First Lady, Hillary Clinton enthusiastically backed NAFTA. As Secretary of State, she pushed for trade deals with Colombia and South Korea and called the TPP the “gold standard” for such accords. (That would be the very same TPP that she’s now hedging on.)

The only times when Clinton has expressed any kind of ambivalence on free trade have come around the periods when she is running for office and needs to get votes from all those Democrats who have gotten the raw end of previous deals. This exhaustive roundup on NPR provides a damning portrait of Clinton’s slipperiness on the issue. When she was running for Senate, she suddenly decided that NAFTA was pretty flawed. When she was gearing up to run for president the first time, she voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement, which had garnered significant opposition within the Democratic base. She also opposed those deals with Colombia and South Korea that she would magically come around on as soon as she joined the Obama administration. And now, with an unexpectedly robust challenge from Sanders on her left, she’s opposing the TPP.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/08/memo_to_progressives_hillary_clinton_is_lying_to_you/

[jfern]

1. Basically everyone knows her opposition to TPP is phony.

She had made plenty of statements in favor of TPP before only recently pretending to be against TPP.

With NAFTA, she pushed hard for it at the time, but 8 years ago when she was running for President lied about opposing it.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251658816

Pretty much she only pretends to be a Democrat when she's running in a Democratic primary for President

[Vattel]

2. It is hard to take her opposition to TPP seriously.

I agree that her opposition to TPP is probably fake, but it's hard to be sure.

[UglyGreed]

3. Kick

[UglyGreed]

4. K