David Frum has now praised Barack Obama for urging Congress to ratify free-trade pacts with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama, saying this represents “an amazing turnabout for President Obama.” Actually, Obama’s support for free trade is quite predictable, despite the occasional protectionist noises he uttered to win over gullible voters in manufacturing states. Obama’s true feelings were unveiled to wealthy donors in San Francisco when he disparaged Pennsylvania primary voters unreceptive to his message of “hope” and “change” for “clinging” to religion and guns. One of the other sins of those benighted Pennsylvanians was their “anti-trade sentiment,” a sentiment quite common among members of the blue-collar middle class that was created by an American manufacturing sector decimated by free trade but alien to Obama, his San Francisco audience, and other credentialed members of the overclass. A Democratic Party controlled by Obama and those who think like him can hardly be expected to oppose consistently or credibly the economic forces that are helping to sweep away a blue-collar middle class that has never been receptive to trendy leftism and that has long been scorned as reactionary and racist by our leftist elites. (Hat tip to Matt Roberts, who pointed this story out to me.)
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