President Obama’s stinging rebuke from his own party on a critical trade vote might officially mark the start of the president’s lame duck status, unless the president can find some way over the next few days to rally Democrats to his side.
With the 2016 presidential campaign already commanding political headlines, Obama is fighting for relevance in Washington, and another defeat next week that the hands of House Democrats would likely be read as a sign that Obama can no longer influence his own party.
Obama has unequivocally declared a major trade deal he is negotiating with 11 Pacific Rim countries as a significant part of his legacy, and has expended substantial effort trying to pass legislation allowing him to finish that agreement.
But Democrats’ willingness to buck their own president Friday on a bill designed to help workers displaced by global trade deals highlighted Obama’s failure to sell Democrats on the plan, and reinforced the lame-duck label.
After the Friday defeat, the president kept singing the virtues of global free trade and pressed fellow Democrats to fall in line to help grown the economy “and “open new avenues of opportunity for hard-working Americans” by approving the trade bills. House GOP leaders will give Obama one more shot, by bringing the trade adjustment assistance bill, or TAA, up for another vote next week.
But the trouble is, passing TAA means Obama gets trade promotion authority, or TPA, and many Democrats simply don’t want to let that happen. Obama has a heavy lift, and may have to convince nearly 100 Democratic “no” votes to get TAA passed.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest brushed aside reporters’ suggestions that Friday’s defeat will undoubtedly reinforce the president’s lame-duck status. Instead, he focused on the bipartisan passage Friday of the trade promotion authority bill that included the support of 28 Democrats after months of skepticism that it could get done.
“And because of the president’s leadership and because of the effective leadership of Republicans on the other side of the aisle that were willing to coordinate and cooperate with the president and his team, the president succeeded in that priority,” Earnest said.
Despite optimism from the White House, some Democratic members are arguing that the damage to Obama’s power has already been done, and is self-inflicted.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, a centrist known for criticizing his Democratic colleagues, complained that the president lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill and his last-minute trip to talk to Democrats Friday morning was too little, too late.
Cuellar faulted Obama for failing to shifting gears quickly enough when labor unions and Democratic leaders began targeting TAA as a way to sink the president’s entire trade agenda. Another Democrat, Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., agreed that the White House waited to long to lobby.
“As great as the president’s speech at the caucus was today, I don’t think it changed many people’s minds,” Davis said. “I think people gave a tremendous amount of consideration to what they were going to do and weighed all the factors and still arrived at their decisions.”
In his speech to the Democratic caucus Friday morning, the president urged his House colleagues to “play it straight” and not take aim at TAA, usually a Democratic pet cause, as a way to try to kill the broader trade measures. But some Democrats took offense to the comments, and said Obama was talking down to them.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said the pursuit of Obama’s trade agenda is off mission from what Democrats should be doing, another sign Democrats may have already moved away from Obama.
“Playing it straight is making sure you fight for American jobs and American wages, and I think that’s the bottom line issue,” he said.
