An excellent sign of impending good fortune for Democrats in the November '08 elections is that Republican pundits are obsessed with the Democratic candidates, and all-but-ignore conservative candidates running for office.

Don't believe me? Try and find a couple conservative columnists/commentators not dwelling endlessly on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Try and find conservatives devoting most of their attention to the important factors affecting Republican chances at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, they blithely ignore innumerable telltale signs of bad news for their own:

• Democratic turnout for the party nomination race has been energizing and record-shattering, while Republican popular vote has been at lethargic levels. For instance, in the North Carolina primaries held on May 6th, 1,571,337 votes were cast for Democrats vs. only 518,224 votes cast for Republicans (with 99% of precincts reporting).

• A sign of possible disaster for John McCain: in North Carolina, as in many other Republican primaries, less than 75% of Republican votes were cast for the party's presumptive nominee. Rep. Ron Paul and Gov. Mike Huckabee collectively received over 100,000 votes, reflecting the dissatisfaction of Republican libertarians and Republican religious right voters, respectively.

  In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports today that "the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September."

• "Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr launched a Libertarian Party presidential bid Monday, saying voters are hungry for an alternative to the status quo who would dramatically cut the federal government," per AP. The sensationally popular Libertarian-infused message of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul amply illuminated the conservative hunger for a small-government, anti-Iraq War alternative to John McCain.

  The vitally pressing question for Republicans should be: will Barr's candidacy siphon desperately-needed votes from McCain... not: how will long-shot Hillary overtake Obama.

• This past month in a possible harbinger of bad electoral news in the fall, Congressional Republicans have lost two special elections in conservative districts held for many years by the party: one, the Illinois seat of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and the other, a Louisiana district which George Bush won in 2004 with 59% of the vote.

• Then there's the under-vetting of John McCain because he won the Republican nomination so quickly and easily. Despite concerns about his age, Sen. McCain refuses to publicly release his medical records. Cindy McCain refuses to release her tax returns. And, of course, recountings abound of McCain's legendary, vesuvian temper...

  And McCain's voting record has, thus far, been woefully under-perused. He's rated a stunning ZERO on pro-choice stances by NARAL, a ZERO on civil rights by the ACLU, and surprisingly, is rated only 17% on energy independence issues by the CAF. Only months ago, McCain publicly claimed to know little about the economy, and he's offered no credible plan for U.S troop withdrawal from Iraq. And this is merely a short-list of McCain unvetted policy shortcomings.

As if all that's not enough, Politico.com reported last week:

"Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money...

"In a piece published in Human Events, the Republicans’ onetime captain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, warned his old colleagues that they face 'real disaster' on Election Day unless they move immediately to 'chart a bold course of real reform' for the country."

So please understand that lately, it's begun to amuse me that conservative pundits are foolishly besotted by the Democratic race, while they ignore addressing and fixing problems in their own house.

All I have to say is this: Thank you! Your attention, criticisms and vast publicity are helping to make Democratic candidates smarter, stronger and more battle-ready, while leaving Republican candidates unprepared for the tough elections that lay ahead.

(Photo taken on May 12, 2008: Craig Mitchelldyer/Getty Images)

Related Reading
Obama vs. McCain: Overdue National Referendum on Iraq
YouTube: Keith Olbermann on John McCain's Anger
Politico.com, May 6, 2008: Special elections an '08 warning for GOP

Gun control laws will be to the 2008 election cycle what the abortion issue was to the 2000 and especially 2004 elections: a top wedge issue used by Republicans to attempt to win-over voter groups deemed essential to electoral victory.

It makes sense in a year in which the white, rural voter with a high school education or less seems to be the demographic group most hotly pursued by both Democrats and Republicans. Statistically, the most likely of the 80 million Americans to own guns are men, whites and southerners.... the very group that voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, not for the presumptive party nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that only Congressional Republicans support pro-gun rights. A small and growing minority of Senate and House Democrats are decidedly against more restrictions on private ownership and use of guns. In the 2006 mid-term elections, three newly elected senators, most notably Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, and 11 new House Democrats, are pro-gun rights advocates.

And that's no accident: the powerful and extremely well-funded National Rifle Association made lucrative campaign contributions to 60 Democrats in the 2006 elections, in addition to the hundreds of loyal Republican recipients of its lobbyist largesse.

To help you understand this surprisingly complex issue, take the time to read my new article, Pros & Cons of Gun Ownership & Use Laws, which includes a succinct outline of the pros and cons, constitutional controversies and new judicial rulings, a brief legislative history, the role of lobbyists and lobbyist money, and the vast political implications for the 2008 presidential race.

One sad, black-and-white fact about federal gun law legislation: lobbyist money rules the day and runs the show in Congress...not the desires of the American people, most who "feel less safe as more people in their community... carry guns," per a Harvard School of Public Health study.

(Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Simply put: Game over. Obama won.

As Todd Beeton accurately observes at MyDD:

"The upshot is that there is no way to spin away what happened tonight: Senator Clinton had a really bad night and Senator Obama had a phenomenal one. It's impossible to overstate the significance of what he accomplished, not only considering what he's overcome over the past three weeks but also considering how decisively he denied Clinton what she needed to continue to have a credible path to the nomination."

Hillary Clinton's campaign was crushed yesterday by Obama in North Carolina (115 delegates) by a 15% margin of over 220,000 votes. And she won Indiana (72 delegates) by a paper-thin margin of about 18,000 votes... apparently as much by the grace of Rush Limbaugh as by the grace of God.

MSNBC's tenatative delegate count, both committed and super, stands at 1,844 for Sen. Obama, and 1,694.5 for Sen. Clinton. Barack Obama stands merely 181 delegates away from capturing the 2008 Democratic nominaton for the presidency.

Hillary Clinton now has no chance to lead Barack Obama in elected, committed delegates or in the popular vote... even if renegade Florida is added to the totals. And after North Carolina and Indiana, her "I'm much more electable" argument to superdelegates is deader than roadkill.

About Money: Obama Has It. Clinton Does Not.
If the black-and-white electoral facts weren't devastating enough for Clinton's '08 ballot box fortunes, there's that whole money thing: Obama has it. Clinton does not.

If money is the oxygen of a campaign, then Hillary's candidacy is on life support. Obama's campaign is flush with contributions, most under $100, from over 1.5 million Americans, an astonishing, record-breaking number by any measure. In stark contrast, the Clinton coffers have run dry for a second time in four months, as the Clintons lent $6.4 million to their campaign in April. This is in addition to $5 million of their personal treasure they lent in February.

After cancelling most public appearances set for today, Sen. Clinton has returned to her Washington D.C. home to huddle with family and advisors.

In her Indiana victory speech, she cheerily proclaimed that "... it's full speed onto the White House." But her post-speech email tellingly excluded, for the first time in months, a request for funds. Instead, her short, bittersweet email ended with, "Let's keep making history together."

There's no visible sign, though, that Hillary Clinton plans to drop out of the race, nor is there historical reason to expect she will.

Who's in Denial, Who's Not
I don't believe that Hillary and Bill Clinton are in a state of denial. These are smart, politically astute people. And they're usually at their sharpest as the counted-out underdogs.

But the hard truth is that this time, barring tragedy or an insider travesty, they won't win the party's '08 nomination. They can be safely counted out as returning to the White House in 2009 as anything but a guest.

So why won't Hillary Clinton quit this race anytime soon? Because she has a goal.

She wants to be Obama's running mate (which I think is a good idea), or she's set her eyes on a 2012 rerun for the presidency, or she's hoping against hope that party insiders will still reject the 46-year-old junior senator from Illinois as too unvetted and untested. (For more reasons, see the New York Daily News' Ugly Truth Why Hillary Clinton Won't Quit .)

But I don't believe that Hillary Clinton is in denial.

However, to keep her base, she must keep them in denial about her chances to win the party nomination. And so she does... by pretending to be viable, by pretending to still have an equal shot in 2008, by revving up her loyal supporters with fighting words, feisty shots at Barack Obama, and always, pandering ad nauseum.

And so Hillary and Bill Clinton cynically make it about themselves and their ambitions, rather than about the good of the Democratic party that's been so good to them over the decades.

By coaxing their supporters to remain in angry, polarizing denial, Hillary and Bill Clinton selfishly may just be sacrificing the very future of this country by making it easier for a third term of George Bush policies via Republican John McCain.

And that, my friends, is precisely why more Democrats have voted in 2008 for Barack Obama: good character, as versus the same old selfish, polarizing, slash-and-burn, me-me-me, status quo politics of old.

Indeed, it is time to turn the page!

Related Reading
Boredom and the Race Between Obama and Clinton
Rev. Wright Is Irrelevant to Obama's Ability to Be President
Disrupting Democracy: Rush Limbaugh Really Is a "Big Fat Idiot"

Bush's biggest debacle clearly is the bankrupting and morally bankrupt Iraq War, which is the centerpiece of Bush foreign policy actions.

The dubious title of Bush's second biggest debacle has innumerable contenders, including the terrible financial damage wreaked on the American middle-class, the shameful failure to rebuild post-Katrina New Orleans, and the obscene budget and trade deficits generated by this White House.

I contend, though, that Bush's second biggest debacle is the centerpiece of Bush domestic policy: the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 and the damage this under-funded initiative has done to public education in leaving millions of American children behind at crucial times in their educational paths. (See No Child Left Behind Act News & Info Hub.)

Like the Iraq War, the No Child Left Behind Act ("NCLB") is a massively complex, often unrealistic undertaking that's laced with political ideology and riddled by greedy cronysim favoring Bush family and friends. And ultimately, both have proven to be failures in producing the desired results... all while costing American taxpayers untold billions. (For details, see Pros & Cons of the No Child Left Behind Act.)

Reading First Program Branded a Failure
Take, for instance, the latest report about the effectiveness of Reading First, a central part of the NCLB strategy. On May 1, 2008, the Department of Education was reluctantly forced to admit in a Congress-mandated report:

"Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension. The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level."

Aimed at increasing the reading skills of low-income first, second and third-graders, the program lavishly spent $1 billion a year largely on consultants hired or identified by the Bush administration/Education Department and on volumes of materials that met narrowly proscribed criteria set by the Bush adminitration. Turns out that many Reading First consultants used for training and materials in are long-time Bush cronies.

Commented Sen. Ted Kennedy, chair of the Senate Education Committee and a co-author of NCLB:

"The Bush administration has put cronyism first and the reading skills of our children last, and this report shows the disturbing consequences."

Read more...

Try as I might, I don't understand what the nutty, narcissistic antics of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, have to do with determining Sen. Obama's fitness to be president.

Hillary Clinton, who's laboring mightily to keep Wright in the headlines, sanctimoniously dubs Wright's comments "offensive and outrageous."

OK, I agree with Clinton's assessment. I, too, find the camera-hog pastor's loony words offensive and outrageous.

So what?

First, how does Obama's attendance at a mainline Protestant-denomination 8,000-member church with an aging, over-opinionated former pastor pertain:

• to ending the Iraq War and bringing our troops home, or
• to solving and salving the nation's horrific financial problems, or
• to correcting the ails of public education for America's children. or
• to delivering desperately-needed healthcare to millions of American families?

I don't see how Wright's off-the-charts, out-of-control behavior would in any way diminish President Obama's ability to accomplish great deeds and good works for the American people as President. I just don't see the logical connection...

Second, if the paranoid suspicion was that Rev. Wright would somehow influence President Obama's thinking, the senator clearly, firmly put that silly idea to rest when he angrily cut all ties to Rev. Wright at an April 29, 2008 news conference, saying about Wright's tacky buffoonery:

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday... His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate...

"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either...

"They offend me. The rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today."

What Does It Mean When One's Pastor Says Stupid Stuff?
What does it mean about a person when his/her pastor says or does stupid stuff?

What does it mean when a person keeps attending a church even though that angry, misguided pastor wrongly blames America's woes on Americans... on white conservative Americans, or gay Americans. or brown-skinned immigrant Americans, or religious right evangelical Americans, or atheist Americans?

One of my favorite pastor-writers, Mark Daniels, a conservative American, eloquently explains what it means in 'He Was My Pastor...Not My Spiritual Mentor' :

"A pastor can be a spiritual mentor, particularly for those who seek out the pastor's counsel. But a pastor isn't a spiritual mentor to every member of her or his parish... To me, there's validity to Obama's distinction between spiritual mentors and pastors...

"The danger in all of this is that folks from either the conventional or new medias may begin to comb through the public pronouncements of every candidate's pastor as a means of tripping candidates up. This would be terribly unfair because in healthy churches, the ministries of pastors may be appreciated even if parishioners don't agree with everything their pastors say...

"Christians gather not to worship their pastors. (Thank God for that!) They gather to worship their God, serve in God's name, and they pray that, most of the time, their pastors speak both faithfully and accurately about the God they believe is revealed on the pages of the Bible.

"In that sense, Obama's statements today reflect classic Christian understandings of pastors, the ministry, and the Church."

A hearty amen to those wise words!

The bottom-line is this: Rev. Jeremiah Wright's self-absorbed shenanigans are irrelevant to Barack Obama's abilities and capabilites to serve as President of the United States.

Why are Some People Dwelling on this Non-Issue?
But I wonder: why are some people still dwelling on what is obviously a non-issue?

Hillary Clinton and John McCain, of course, are using it to smear a capable opponent.

The cable news talking heads... especially Norah O'Donnell and the hysterical Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and the equally histrionic Fox News blatherers... are using it to hype ratings and to grab support for their favorite candidates.

But everyone else? Why are they focusing on this particular pastor and his former congregant when many, many pastors to political leaders have famously uttered equally stupid, equally bigoted, equally incendiary, equally destructive words into TV news cameras?

Try as I might, the only difference I can come up with is the color of their skin: black...

... rather than Jerry Falwell-white, Pat Robertson-white or the white skin-tone of John McCain's proud supporter, Pastor John Hagee, who preaches that "all Muslims are programmed to kill" and "God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before."

I don't hear the same shrieking chorus of voices about McCain's pastor-pal. Do you?

(Photo taken on April 30, 2008: Mark Lyons/Getty Images)

Related Reading
Religious Tests in 2008: Only for Blacks & Mormons?
Boredom and the Race Between Obama and Clinton

Better Living - Thoughts from Mark Daniels: 'He Was My Pastor...Not My Spiritual Mentor'
Salon, Feb 28, 2008: Some hateful, radical ministers -- white evangelicals -- are acceptable by Glenn Greenwald
Transcript: Obama Press Conference on Jeremiah Wright
Talk to Action, Spril 30, 2008: McCain Endorser Pastor John Hagee: God Curse and Doom America

A colleague of mine... not an Obama fan... is ruffled at a New York Times report by two Obama staffers that the senator from Illinois, who holds an almost insurmountable lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, is " bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton and eager to move into the general election against Senator John McCain."

With all due respect to my esteemed colleague, here's my reaction to Sen. Obama being less than enthralled by the present, last-gasp state of the race between he and Sen. Clinton: Thank God!

At long last! A candidate not addicted to the flattery and applause on the campaign stump. A candidate who doesn't thrive on the thrust and mean-spirited parry between candidates. A candidate more interested in moving on and addressing the nation's business, than wasting time mired in stale squabbles and the same old non-issues and dead end discussions.

Barack Obama isn't alone in his touch of boredom with this endless 16-month, 21-debate campaign. After all, it's not like anyone's bothering to analyze actual issues anymore.

For one, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News are so bored with this race, that at the so-called debate they bungled on April 16, 2008, they filled more than 60 minutes before they asked an issue-related question. Wrote Tom Shales, the respected TV critic for the Washington Post:

"For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news."

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the third highest ranking House member and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, seems bored with this race. He's angry, too. And Clyburn is particularly concerned that this drag on the Democratic party campaign is boring potential voters. Reported CNN:

"Clyburn said he's already noticing diminishing enthusiasm among younger voters, citing a difference in a visit to a college campus in January and a recent one.

" 'We have young people -- African-Americans that are as enthusiastic about this party as they've been in the last 40 years, and we cannot tamp down that enthusiasm or we will not be successful in November if we do,' he said."

DNC Party Chair Howard Dean isn't so much bored as aggravated and ready to move this race forward for the benefit of the Democratic party as a whole. Repeatedly in the last week, Dean has urged of superdelegates:

"I need them to say who they’re for starting now. We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time. We’ve got to know who our nominee is."

Let's be honest. There's plenty to be bored with, and more than a tad irritated by, including:

• Politically correct over-attention given to Bill and Hillary which would never be accorded to Obama if he was in 2nd place and facing an almost insurmountable Clinton lead.
  Read more...

When comedian Al Franken wrote the book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations" in 1996, he may have been half jesting. Maybe...

In 2008, though, my guess is that Mr. Franken, who is challenging Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) in November for his U.S. Senate seat, and most other Democrats (all?) would have no problem asserting their views that Rush Limbaugh really IS a "big, fat idiot" who disrespects American democracy and American voters.

Per the ABC News affiliate in Denver on Thursday, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh "made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer." Reports ABC7News:

"He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

" 'Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don't elect Democrats,' Limbaugh said during Wednesday's radio broadcast. He then went on to say that's the best thing that could happen to the country...

"Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh's comments, when he later stated, 'I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver.' "

And here's the scariest part: On the Denver station's website is a poll asking "Do you think Rush Limbaugh crossed the line when he hoped for riots during Denver's DNC convention?" Of 5,274 responses, 63% (3,613 votes) voted NO!

Just two days ago, I received an email from one of Limbaugh's Operation Chaos minions, ranting and raving:

Read more...

Like it or not, Barack Obama should beseech Hillary Clinton to be his vice presidential running mate, because he can barely close the deal with Democrats without her on his team. And let's be honest: without stronger party support for his candidacy, many Democrats would question his nomination's legitimacy.

However, Hillary now has no realistic possibility of heading the Democratic ticket, as her Pennsylvania "win" was too small, too diminished from the 20-point edge she held six weeks ago in the Keystone state. It was simply too little, too late by any objective measure.

(And her fundraising lags far behind his campaign coffers. See the most current fundraising statistics for Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton .)

Hillary is the working-class ying to Barack's college-educated yang, and the two halves make one whole Democratic party in 2008. And it's looking increasingly like neither can make to the White House without the other. As my About.com Conservatives counterpart correctly observes, "McCain is making in-roads in turf normally claimed by Democrats."

That, of course, is due to two factors in Pennsylvania:

• Obama's wrong-headed remarks that working class folks resort to religion and guns as paranoid medicine to bitterly soothe their economic woes; and

• Using every divisive political tactic and trick in the playbook, Hill and Bill have triangulated, aggravated and separated enough blue-collar workers, senior citizens and older white women from Obama's message to ensure that he can't politically survive without them.

Clinton: Bullying and Whining to Diminished Victory
Reminiscent of Karl Rove's campaign strategies, the Clinton's bully behavior in Pennsylvania has again been been replete with fear-mongering, whining, smear-tactic robocalls, trash-talking, and and their trademark self-pity. The New York Times observes today in The Low Road to Victory :

"It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

"If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race...

"Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead."

Obama: Offending His Way to Wider Loss
While Pennsylvania is the perfect storm of conditions for Clinton victory, Barack Obama made matters far worse for his cause by uttering behind closed doors to wealthy supporters in sophisticated San Francisco:

Read more...

Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania today. Her margin of victory should be about 10%, which is considerably less than the 20%+ edge she held in the Keystone state six weeks.

But Sen. Clinton's coveted victory will be much too little, much too late for her to catch Barack Obama in all markers of significance: committed delegates, popular votes, states won. And due to mass movement of superdelegates to Sen. Obama since Super Tuesday, February 5th, Clinton now holds only 24 more than does Obama, drastically down from a 200+ lead four months ago.

Harsh reality for the Clinton camp is that barring travesty or tragedy, Obama will win the Democratic party's 2008 presidential nomination.

The question of the moment is: what's next for Hillary Clinton after Pennsylvania, which is likely the last grand moment of her soap opera-ish 2008 campaign?

Will she become the Mike Huckabee of the Democratic party, sticking around embarrassingly long after her time has passed?

Will she soldier on, angrily embracing her whiskey-swilling, gun-toting, inner Goldwater-Girl while continuing to denigrate the party's activist base?

Or will she take seriously the sky-high writing on the Democratic wall, and gracefully exit while she has any shred left of a national future within the party?

One foreboding factor is that with eight primaries remaining, the Clinton campaign has run out of funds. And Obama has millions left for primary campaigns.

(See quick-reading summaries of the most current fundraising statistics for Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton .)

Reports the Wall Street Journal in Clinton Campaign in Red as Pennsylvania Contest looms : Read more...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right last week to indefinitely delay House approval of the U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

Despite the impatient and oddly desperate urging of President Bush, supporters of Pelosi's decision come not just from liberals and Democratic presidential candidates, but also from populist conservatives and even a leading libertarian.

OneNewsNow.com wrote about Lew Rockwell, a respected top libertarian thinker who is pro-free trade and anti-labor union:

"Lew Rockwell... says free trade is good for economic development and establishing peace among nations, but that the Colombian agreement being pushed by President Bush is a form of 'managed trade.' He argues that the legislation is full of special deals for big companies, yet does not make it easier for the small-business person to engage in international trade.

" 'These sorts of trade agreements -- we've had it with NAFTA and CAFTA and others -- are not actually free trade,' Rockwell explains. 'What they do is ... give special benefits, special deals to big companies ... that are friendly to the administration in power.'

"The political pundit is convinced that even those siding with Bush on the legislation really have no idea what all the ramifications might be."

A common complaint is that U.S. free trade agreements have failed to be smart, beneficial deals for the U.S., often benefitting only a few American mega-corporations. (See Pros & Cons of Free Trade Agreements .)

Of course, U.S. labor unions oppose this and most free trade agreements, but for entirely different reasons than Mr. Rockwell. The Teamsters report about leader Jimmy Hoffa:

" 'This trade deal is an insult to every American who works for a living,' Hoffa said. 'Workers are feeling the pain of the trade deals that began with NAFTA. They’ve been disasters.

" 'The Teamsters, the Change to Win federation and the entire labor movement will work tirelessly to defeat this job-killing trade deal that never should have been negotiated in the first place,' Hoffa said.

"The proposed deal with Colombia is especially repugnant to U.S. labor unions as Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for union members."

In fact, the New York Times reported, in an article entitled Union Killings Peril Trade Pact With Colombia :

"More than 2,500 union members in Colombia have been killed since 1985, with fewer than 100 cases resulting in convictions, according to the National Labor School, a labor research group in Medellín."

The Voice Of America reports that "Many congressional Democrats say they oppose the agreement because of Colombia's often-criticized record on human-rights issues and labor-union activity."

Pelosi and Bush Wrangle Over Fate of Colombia Free Trade Agreement
The U.S.-Colombia agreement was signed by the Bush administration at the end of 2006, subject to normal approval by the House once the White House presents the legislation for vote. Trade promotion rules dictate that once legislation is presented to Congress, it must be voted upon within 90 days.

Speaker Pelosi and Democratic-led House leadership told Bush that more changes were needed to the Colombia agreement before passage could be secured. The President ignored Pelosi's advice, and sent the legislation to the House on April 8th... assuming he had cornered the House into acceptance.

As is within her realm, Speaker Pelosi surprised the President by promptly blocking vote on the agreement, thereby rendering the legislation indefinitely deferred. Reported the New York Times:

" Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats said they had earlier beseeched the White House not to submit the agreement— which involves a small part of United States trade — without doing more to help homeowners and the unemployed as the economy weakens...

"A senior administration official, speaking anonymously to discuss internal negotiations, said the administration had offered to add spending programs to the trade deal to help workers in the United States. But another administration official said the offers from the White House were more limited.

"But Democrats said the White House had been adamant in refusing to offer such incentives, despite the fact that Ms. Pelosi again told Mr. Bush, at what was described as a testy meeting on Wednesday afternoon at the White House, that the accord was not dead if he would be forthcoming."

Said Speaker Pelosi, "We first and foremost are going to look out for American working families."

The proverbial ball is in President Bush's court. But don't hold your breath for passage anytime soon.

George Bush is hardly known for compromising in order to help middle-class Americans, and Democrats are far more worried about pleasing voters in November than appeasing George Bush.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Related Reading
Profile of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Pros & Cons of U.S. Free Trade Agreements