Democrats Won in Murtha's District on Trade Reform

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/democrats-won-in-murthas_b_582221.html

Mike Elk

Campaign for America's Future Posted: May 19, 2010 03:08 PM

In 1986, I was born in Rep. John Murtha's district in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Two years later, card-carrying ACLU member Michael Dukakis carried the county by an 11-point margin in a year in which he won only nine states nationally. Despite being a rural, basically all-white county, it stuck by Dukakis due to the concentration of union manufacturing jobs in the district.

Yet in 2008 my home county voted for Republican Sen. John McCain by a 17-point margin. What happened between those years? Democrats sold out on NAFTA, the North American Free-Trade Agreement, and thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared. Voters in Murtha's district started voting Republican because they felt betrayed by the Democrats. In 2008, Murtha's district was the only district in the country that voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and then voted McCain in 2008.

While Democrats were voted out at the national level in Murtha's district, Murtha was re-elected repeatedly because he brought home defense manufacturing jobs and fought against unfair trade deals. When Murtha died, many political analysts said that no other Democrat would be able to hold onto his district. What they should have said is that no Democrat running on the national Democratic jobs platform could have won.

Instead, Democrat Mark Critz ran on a much more progressive platform of job creation through trade reform. He blasted his Republican candidate for being in favor of tax loopholes that favor companies that outsource jobs, even as the Obama Administration just this week used a lobbyist memo to claim that outsourcing created jobs. On a side note, Critz also blasted his opponent for supporting a value-added tax, something the Obama administration is also considering.

The lesson should be clear: Trade reform is a hugely popular issue on both the left and right. Many conservative Democrats, such as Heath Shuler of North Carolina, used trade issues to propel themselves into office in 2006. In 2008, President Obama pledged to renegotiate NAFTA, something McCain was against, in order to win Ohio. (However, renegotiating trade deals is now considered laughable within the Administration now.)

Trade is also an area where the so called "populist" Tea Party is weak. There is absolutely no mention of trade reform in the Tea Party's official "Contract From America." (See Roger Bybee's great piece on this problem for the Tea Party Movement.) Democrats could easily then seize the high ground on trade.

FULL story at link.

Murtha on his district being racist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlMGmA7yWw4

his Vouchers for Medicare and Privatization of SS.

Real TeaPartiers hate Nafta and fought against it back
when it was passed. Could be the GOP has told leaders
just not talk about it.