[Establishing an office of public integrity] was rejected [by the Senate]. And according to the National Journal, that position is a liberal position.

Now, I don’t think that’s a liberal position. I think there are a lot of Republicans and a lot of Independents who would like to make sure that ethic investigations are not conducted by the people who are potentially being investigated. So the categories don’t make sense.

I don’t see that as saying “liberal=bad”. he’s saying that presenting ethics as a liberal/conservative position doesn’t make sense. And he’s right. It’s a matter then entire public no matter what their political leanings should be concerned about.

I think the diarist is right when s/he describes Obama’s rhetoric as

Democratic goals and values aren’t just liberal. They are American goals and values: ethical government, availability of health care and college, a common sense foriegn policy, and more.

Is he wrong? Or should the Democratic Party only appeal to hardcore lefties, the same way the GOP seems to only want to appeal to hardcore righties?
But hey, what do I know? I’ve obviously been drinking the kool-aid, and can’t possibly think for myself.

Think of it realistically: what does he gain by sending such a message now that he couldn’t gain later, after the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries?

It does sound like Canada’s Conservative Party members are trying to game the primary process. Divide and conquer. And though I’ve endorsed neither candidate, I just haven’t seen Obama do anything that clumsy and amateurish, nor do I see any motive for him to have done that.

The Canadian embassy is refuting the CTV report, saying no such conversations about NAFTA ever took place with either campaign.

Late Update: ABC News has more reaction from the Canadian embassy.

Later Update: Meanwhile, a key labor surrogate for Hillary is hitting Obama over the CTV report.

Yglesias:

Via Brad DeLong, a David Leonhart column on how little NAFTA has to do with Ohio’s economic woes. Still, I think hearing that the “more important cause of Ohio’s jobs exodus is the rise of China, India and the old Soviet bloc” rather than trade with Mexico as such is going to do relatively little to cause Ohions to reverse their skepticism about trade policy. With trade as with every other policy area, most people’s understanding of the details is very fuzzy.

“NAFTA” means “recent trade phenomena” and there’s no denying that recent trends in international trade have caused economic dislocation in the rust belt. Still, responsible politicians wouldn’t be promising to help Ohioans out by renegotiating NAFTA when renegotiating NAFTA won’t actually deliver much help to the state. It’s a bit of a cynical ploy — by thundering loudly and pounding the table about the need to renegotiate the deal, you set yourself up for a situation where very minor modifications that barely impact anyone (for good or for ill) count as fulfilling the promise.

It almost seems like a Jedi mind trick to get the Clinton camp to repudiate itself: they’ve ‘gone negative’ against their own candidate, because NAFTA is now a code word for labor and economic woes. Public perception regarding NAFTA changed, and so did Hillary right along.

This is not the change you’re looking for. You can go about your business. Move along…move along.

Yet, for all this rhetoric, do either of them propose any grand fixes to NAFTA? No:

But when you read [Clinton's] plan, or Mr. Obama’s trade agenda, you discover none of it is particularly radical. Neither candidate calls for a repeal of Nafta, or anything close to it. Both instead want to tinker with the bureaucratic innards of the agreement. They want stronger “labor and environmental standards” and better “enforcement mechanisms.”

It’s a bit of an odd situation. They call the country’s trade policy a disaster, and yet their plan to fix it starts with, um, cracking down on Mexican pollution.

All of it is gamesmanship, pure and simple.

There was a moment last night, when Obama was given the opportunity to talk about liberalism. Now, the worst answer would’ve been to bash it. A better answer would’ve been to embrace it. The best answer?

To make liberal values more appealing and move them to the majority. And that’s what he did. In one brief moment, Obama captured the essense of the power of his potential presidency — to build a progressive majority by breaking down the “categories” and attracting voters to our positions.
[snip]

[Establishing an office of public integrity] was rejected [by the Senate]. And according to the National Journal, that position is a liberal position.

Now, I don’t think that’s a liberal position. I think there are a lot of Republicans and a lot of Independents who would like to make sure that ethic investigations are not conducted by the people who are potentially being investigated. So the categories don’t make sense.

if so, I would have to say I agree with that. It’s called “moving the overton window”, mainstreaming our ideas just like the conservatives mainstreamed theirs.

then why link approvingly to SusanHu’s blog post? that’s exactly what it is, a compare and contrast post.

and he’s sold himself as the candidate of change.

well, he’s sold himself with lines about specific changes. he’s not, for example, for changing the country back to the gold standard. it’s not a valid argument to claim that because obama uses the word “change” in his speeches that he must automatically be for any change we can imagine.

also, clinton has also tried to sell herself as “the candidate of change”, as has mccain, and virtually every presidential candidate in my memory. “candidate of change” is one of those lines that literally everyone uses. no one ever runs on the status quo, not even incumbants.

He is another politician. Just because he talks about hope and change shouldn’t make anyone think differently. Changing “the old political ways” doesn’t mean there won’t be “new political ways” that are installed.

I do think people should be thinking about the “genie”. If Obama is elected on a change platform, I don’t think that goes back into the bottle. With Obama’s point being that people power can fight money power, I don’t think that those who support that belief are going to let Obama forget that if he were elected. Not that I think he would, either.

i agree that NAFTA is a mixed issue. what i see now in ohio is two politicians pandering for votes. so what? it’s part of their job to pander and yet nothing either of them has said (that they will make sure there are enforceable labor and environmental standards) is contradicted by either of their record, so the pandering is just pandering. it’s not actual lying.

what i also see here is a clinton supporter (SusanHu) repeating another unsubstantiated rumor about obama, while ignoring that the same unsubstantiated rumor exists about her own candidate. even when the rumor about her own candidate is mentioned in the very same article she used to attack obama.

You know what? I’ve never had a job where I was allowed to criticize my boss publicly. Do you think that means I didn’t learn anything?

Hillary Clinton’s ambivalence about NAFTA was captured in a Jan. 5, 2004, teleconference, in which she argued for a “rethinking of our trade policies, not to turn our back on trade, but to come up with a more effective 21st-century trade policy.” She said that “on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America” but that the Bush administration needed to do more to enforce fair trading rules.”

“And you simply have to make a distinction between what she supported as a political wife and what she says now. You don’t see a difference there?”
She said that as Senator for NY, not president’s wife.
I still want to see the “Obama running from liberalism” link before I comment on it.

And you simply have to make a distinction between what she supported as a political wife and what she says now. You don’t see a difference there?

Not when she claims that period as part of her resume for being president.

Low-level sources also suggested the Clinton campaign may have given a similar warning to Ottawa, but a Clinton spokesperson flatly denied the claim.

The problem here is that no one has any proof of what was said to whom, and who is playing whom. Meanwhile, we have Clinton operatives saying that Hillary Clinton did not support NAFTA, yet she has spoken positively of NAFTA on several occasions, including in her autobiography, “Living History.”

Imagine how you’ll feel when you find out that — wink, wink — Hillary praised NAFTA before claiming she never really liked it. Must be all that experience that lets her turn on a dime like that…

TDB:Quotes of Hillary Clinton Praising NAFTA

The Daily Background has up a good fact sheet about the times Hillary Clinton has praised NAFTA. TDB reports:

1996: Hillary said “I think NAFTA is proving its worth.”

1997: Hillary went to Mexico and proclaimed “NAFTA is working, working for you and working for the American people… We must accelerate the pace of these efforts, to reach more people and more communities.”

1998: Hillary went before the World Economic Forum and lauded multinational corporations for mounting “a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of Nafta.”

The Field also reports:

Sirota has dug up the text of Senator Clinton’s speech, which says that NAFTA, among other legacies of the 1990s Clinton administration, “came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves. Those ideas were converted into policies programs that literally changed millions of lives and, I argue, changed America.”

Maybe when she said “changed…lives and…America” she meant negatively! Yeah, that must be it.

Neither Clinton nor Obama are being completely honest with the public, probably because it’s an emotional issue and complicated. (It would have worked better if the Bush administration hadn’t decided to stop enforcing the terms.)

And you simply have to make a distinction between what she supported as a political wife and what she says now. You don’t see a difference there? I mean, you honestly think she was going to publicly attack her husband the president on a major policy? David Gergen, who was there, said she raised her concerns about NAFTA in private meetings, but it would have been in no way appropriate for her to undercut his policy in public.

But you see, Clinton isn’t the “hope” and “change” candidate. Obama is. Every time something like this happens, he looks a little more like another politician.

they’re probably “spin” it the same way the clinton campaign did, by denying the phone call ever happened. from the same article susie quoted above:

Low-level sources also suggested the Clinton campaign may have given a similar warning to Ottawa, but a Clinton spokesperson flatly denied the claim.

i don’t know why SusanHu would ignore that part, or claim that “there’s no wink, wink in her statements”

What I DO know is that President Clinton is responsible for NAFTA in the first place, and Mrs. Clinton has praised NAFTA as one of his successes, and as a success for New York. Now she acts as if she never supported it to begin, which just isn’t true.

Do I trust Obama to repeal or renegotiate NAFTA? Not really, but who knows?
Do I trust Clinton to repeal what she says has been a success? No. I do not.

Could you link the post at dailykos where obama runs from the word “liberal”?