Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s increasingly vocal opposition this week to the Obama administration’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal has put Hillary Clinton in the awkward position of having to choose sides.
True to form, the former first lady and newly-announced Democratic presidential candidate, who is currently dealing with a media storm over reports she engaged in ethically questionable behavior when she served as secretary of state, has so far avoided doing just that.
News groups, including Vox, the Huffington Post, CNN and Politico have all followed the increasingly public dispute between the Massachusetts senator and the president, with many noting a hint of hostility in the back-and-forth.
“Elizabeth Warren strikes back against Obama over trade,” read a CNN headline.
When Obama responded to Warren’s publicly-stated objections, the Huffington Post characterized it as the senator getting “called out.”
A Washington Post op-ed headline read, “Obama escalates push-back against Elizabeth Warren and other trade deal critics.”
Warren’s chief objection to the deal, a free-trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, Canada and nine other countries, is that the majority of the negotiations have taken place behind closed doors.
“We’ve all seen the tricks and traps that corporations hide in the fine print of contracts,” Warren wrote this week, accusing the president of keeping “the American people in the dark.”
The president disputed her characterization this week, telling a crowd, “When I keep on hearing people repeating this notion that it’s ‘secret,’ I gotta say, it’s dishonest. And it’s concerning when I see friends of mine resorting to these kinds of tactics.”
In a separate interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the president stated flatly, “she’s wrong on this.”
As the press has eagerly followed the ongoing dispute between the Warren camp and the White House, as it has also followed closely the mounting questions surrounding the Clinton’s years at the State Department.
The confluence of these stories has placed Hillary Clinton in the awkward position of having to stake out a position on the proposed deal: Does she back the president or the very popular, and more progressive, Warren?
The answer is still unclear.
True to her signature style, the presidential candidate has left the press in the dark, keeping her true thoughts to herself.
As noted by Politico, Time, the Intercept and others, Clinton remains mostly silent on the issue, leaving reporters with no choice but to speculate over whether she supports the proposed deal.
For the press, piecing together cryptic remarks made by Clinton and White House surrogates is the closest anyone is going to get right now to understanding her position.
White House spokesperson Eric Schultz would only say that he didn’t know of anything that would “suggest any distance” between Clinton’s position and the deal backed by the White House, the Intercept reported, noting that “trade consultants” close to Clinton “remain optimistic about her support.”
Former Clinton aide Bob Hormats, who worked in the Clinton-run State Department, would only say that she “understands very clearly that there are enormous trade opportunities in Asia and creating jobs.
For reporters, struggling to divine Clinton’s thought on the news of the day is not exactly a new problem, as the former first lady has long relied on surrogates to do the talking.
Clinton, for her part, would only say of the deal this week that she doesn’t oppose but doesn’t fully support it.
“We need to build things, too,” she told an audience in New Hampshire this week during her “listening tour.”
