After years of covering every dispute and clash between the conservative wing and the mainstream faction of the Republican Party, the national news media has found substantial tension also exists within the Democrats.
Though Democrats have found themselves divided on other issues — of note most recently was House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress on a disagreement with the Obama administration — media attention has largely and consistently focused on battles within the GOP, which has fractured since the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009.
The new divisions within the Democratic Party center on President Obama’s push for authority on an international trade deal. Many congressional Democrats, particularly Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have been vocal in criticizing the deal as a threat to American workers and consumers.
“[T]he dispute over Obama’s efforts to get trade negotiating authority from Congress and complete a 12-nation Pacific rim trade deal goes to the heart of a fundamental divide within the Democratic Party,” the Associated Press reported Thursday. “It also has turned the tables in Congress where Democrats once delighted in watching Republicans struggle with their conservative tea party faction.”
On Tuesday, Rolling Stone likened the rift between Obama and congressional Democrats as “a little like if mom … shouting at each other in the living room,” noting that Democrats “aren’t used to this kind of rancor.”
Yahoo News on May 9 made the same analogy. “[L]ike a marriage in which the spouses pretend to be happier than they really are, Obama’s polite alliance with the populist left appears to be suddenly crumbling under the weight of free trade.”
Tension reached a boiling point this week when Obama said in an interview that Warren, who he called “Elizabeth,” “is dead wrong.” He described her as “a politician like everybody else.”
A Warren ally, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, retorted by suggesting an element of sexism in Obama’s remarks. “I think referring to her as first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps?” Brown said in a separate interview. “I’ve said enough.”
This, even though Obama on Tuesday tried to sell the trade deal to his supporters in an email by calling it “an opportunity to set the most progressive trade agreement in our nation’s history.”
Congress is stalled for now on giving Obama authority to unilaterally negotiate the terms of the trade deal, with all but one Senate Democrat on Tuesday voting against the president.
Leaders in both parties, however, have said they resumed negotiations on the deal to attempt another vote soon.
