First campaign financing, then "will of the people" and now this -- it's not that Obama shifts positions and triangulates, it's that his supporters don't care while they're all over Clinton. Kudos to Josh for not drinking the kool-aid.  

Engineers and scientists aren't uneducated, yet many of their jobs are offshored.  That's one reason you're seeing declining enrollments at university engineering schools.  Explain to me now how you

will address that?  American companies can't wait to send as many high-dollar jobs overseas.

Pfizer even went so far as to say they'll keep R&D staff frozen in the US while they expand in

overseas labs.  And you want to convince me that those US scientists are low-end labor??  I

can assure you that getting an advanced degree in physics, or chemistry, or electrical engineering

is vastly more difficult to do than an advanced degree in journalism.  Why bother if the job isn't

there when you finish?

Your thesis that training or retraining protects you from being outsourced is a lie in the end.  Just ask

the IBM'ers who, in a profession where there's a supposed short supply (IT workers), why they just got

their pay slashed 15%.

When I see journalists and economists jobs being outsourced in droves, and they still think

outsourcing is great, will I buy into their tripe.  I think FAIR trade is good.  What we have these

days is anything but fair trade.  If we did, then the US would not have massive trade deficits with every trading "partner".

I'd almost agree, but I'm not sure how pursuing this as a line of attack constitutes a policy shift. As for  the whole McCain thing. Hasn't anyone thought that Obama is likely hedging so as to not turn off the money spigot while he's still fighting it out with Clinton?

If you're right Josh, it is disappointing, but I really do think its too early to say,  

While I agree with Obama's first speech, that these jobs aren't coming back, I'm glad that he's willing to re-examine NAFTA, and what it's doing to America, because as someone who recently moved back to the rust belt here in Missouri, I've been shocked at the deterioration, deterioration of infrastructure and the collapse of opportunities for working-class people which is occurring here and across the Midwest and along the East Coast. It's very depressing and it's unacceptable.

I see Obama's change as a response to what he's seeing as he travels around America.  We need a president who is willing to modify his position in accordance with the needs of the people and the economy.

This may just be politics for some, but for many Americans who have watched their jobs evaporate, along with their prospects for the future and the future of their children, it's all too real.  And telling Americans that you're going to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour the way Clinton has, is not going to fix these problems, there just aren't enough service jobs to go around.

Even college graduates can't find good paying jobs in this country because their jobs are being farmed out as well.  I don't know what the answer is to these pervasive problems, but I want a president who at least acknowledges that the US people are coming out on the short end of the stick with these trade agreements, and it's only getting worse.  The next president needs to recognize this, start looking for answers and taking steps to help the American people.

I find the defense of anti trade rhetoric bizarre to say the least. Since trade has been opened up we have had the lowest  unemployment rate on record for a sustained period, no meaningful slowdown to speak of (possibly until now --- and the jury is still out on that) and a job growth picture that is the envy of the western world. I completely agree that the gov't owes the losers far more help. I also find it reprehensible that we allow continued support to sugar and cotton growers and silly ethanol subsidies while asking the blue collar worker to suck it up. But it is hard to find among nonpartisan economic thinkers many who feel that our country on balance is not much better off with free trade as a core policy. And while we enjoy historically substantial benefits, anti trade types seem utterly unphased by the enormous benefits to the poor in the countries that we trade with.

If you try to pin him on this, though, he will likely respond that he is attacking Clinton on NAFTA for the same reason he opposed CAFTA---that the idea of free trade with Mexico is not necessarily a bad thing, but that the agreement itself was approached irresponsibly. Unlikely, however, that he will tell you exactly why---he'll say something along the lines that it did not offer sufficient protections for American workers and so forth, that we need a trade policy with an open perspective without sacrificing jobs at home, etc.

This is Obama's style. He comes off as sounding non-ideological and satisfies both the free-traders and the protectionists. (This is of course a far cry from compromise, which satisfies no one.) Clinton triangulates; Obama equivocates. And he's damn good at it, and unafraid to use conservative rhetoric---I'm sure, given a chance, he will relentlessly justify liberal policies on relatively conservative philosophical grounds to swing voters in the general election. Whereas Bush was the "compassionate conservative" in 2000, Obama is the "reasonable liberal." With bonus points for hope, inspiration, change, etc.

I'm going to reserve judgment on this, because Obama put forward the *first* position as recently as his economic speech in Wisconsin.

Further, pounding Hillary on NAFTA is not necessarily inconsistent with the first position.  His position is that free trade is great, inevitable, etc., but that if we're going to embrace free trade, we have to be prepared to do more to help and protect the losers in the bargain.  The NAFTA pounding could very well be: you did free trade but did nothing to mitigate its many harsh consequences.  That would be a wholly consistent with his general view.  Let's wait to see what he actually says before accusing him of flip-flopping or triangulating, or whatever.  I'm not seeing it here so far.

Josh,

"Inconsistency" or "flip-flop" memes can spread like wildfire through the media & the blogosphere, so I think it's important for journalists to try to be comprehensive and fair when making these sorts of assessments.  While I think it's worthwhile to examine whether Obama has been consistent in his trade rhetoric & policy, or whether he's currently demagoguing the trade issue, I'm not sure this post accomplishes either task.  As there's nothing directly inconsistent in the passages you excerpt, your point seems to be more about a shift in the emphasis of Obama's rhetoric (as opposed to him directly contradicting positions he espoused a few years ago).  And when you're trying to assess whether someone's emphasis has shifted over time, it just doesn't cut it to compare a few paragraphs of an op-ed (by the candidate himself) from 2005 with a couple of sentences in 2008 from a flier and an advisor.  

To present a more fair comparison, I think you'd want to look at the fuller context of Obama's statements on trade in 2004-05 and in 2008.  In a quick google news 2005-obama-NAFTA search I could only locate this reference to Obama's statements on NAFTA in 2004-05: "As a state senator, Obama had continually passed progressive legislation--a record that he vowed to add to when he began his run for the US Senate on a platform of clear opposition to the Patriot Act, the Iraq War and NAFTA, all positions anathema to the DLC."  www.commondreams.org/.../0304-27.htm  That's not much, but it does suggest that Obama was speaking out against NAFTA back then, just as he is now.  (And I'd assume that with your TNR journalistic resources, you could do a more thorough job exploring his statements back then.)

As for his current statements, the place I'd begin would be the speech that his camp touted as his big economic speech recently in Wisconsin:

mystateline.com/.../fulltext

These seem to be the key trade grafs:

"It’s also time to look to the future and figure out how to make trade work for American workers. I won’t stand here and tell you that we can – or should – stop free trade. We can’t stop every job from going overseas. But I also won’t stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements. And that’s a position of mine that doesn’t change based on who I’m talking to or the election I’m running in.

"You know, in the years after her husband signed NAFTA, Senator Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring. Now that she’s running for President, she says we need a time-out on trade. No one knows when this time-out will end. Maybe after the election. I don’t know about a time-out, but I do know this – when I am President, I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for our environment and protections for American workers."

There are also sections where he talks about job retraining and unemployment insurance.

Based on this sort of look at his record, I don't see evidence of a "disappointing trade shift."   I understand that writers can't respond to every reader comment (they'd never get any work done), but it would be nice if the supposed "shift" on trade at issue here could be clarified.  Many thanks.

guyminuslife --

The problem with Obama's clever use of Republican talking points is that when he competes with McCain in the general election he is going to be left with either a "me too" position on too many important issues (for instance, on health care mandates and the social security "crisis"), or will need to come up with a complicated explanation for why his position isn't "me too." It is going to get in the way of his ability to tell a good, clear story that illustrates why we need "change," clearly deliniates what that change will look like, and defines who (which party and interests) are the obstacles to that change. That's the kind of storytelling  (that Reagan, for instance, excelled at) that wins elections.

Also, after spending so much time demonizing the Clintons personally, lumping them together as equal evils with the George W. Bush, and denigrating any successes enjoyed by Bill Clinton's administration, any support from or campaigning for Obama by Bill Clinton will be as problematic for him as Bush's support for McCain will be.

He may win, mostly on the basis of Republican fatigue and the fact that McCain is old and not a great campaigner. But he will take office on the basis of a muddle rather than a mandate.

Protectionism's a losing battle. The key point is whether the higher incomes that usually flow from expanded trade are recycled back to the US in the form of exports of higher value-added US goods-- computers, cars, financial services etc-- so as to offset the loss of US jobs in low value-added sectors. WRT Mexico, I do not see any evidence that Mexican incomes have soared and that exports of such goods to Mexico have increased.

What I suspect have increased are exports of LOW value-added goods, especially in areas like corn production, as Mexico's low value-added industries suffer from both NAFTA's carve-outs for powerful US old economy interests and from competition from Chinese manufacturing. True to form, Obama like every other member of our political class fails to zero in on NAFTA's fatal flaw, which is its failure to create low-end jobs not in the US but IN MEXICO.

God, what an asinine debate we have...

The whole point of NAFTA was to forestall risks to the US emanating from Mexico, on two fronts:

1) political instability (the CIA and many intel experts have long worried about the very real prospect of political strife, not to mention revolution, on our doorstep)-- call it the risk of a Mexican Chavez;

2) mass emigration to the US by desperately poor Mexicans, in the millions, overwhelming US social services and government budgets-- call it the risk of a Mexican Marielito wave.

#1 was never explicitly discussed in the public debate, but it was always a top priority for the security establishment. #2 was the essence of the sales pitch. Gore faced down Perot again and again by specifically, repeatedly promising that NAFTA would _reduce illegal immigration_. That's how the Clinton admin got the deal done. Full stop.

So how has NAFTA done? NAFTA did indeed help with #1. Unlike Salinas Gortari, the Harvard-educated "reformer", the  current president is not accepting bribes from drug kingpins (Salinas pocketed ca. $100 million) and is determined to fight those kingpins, including with many thousands of federal troops in pitched battles across Mexico's throughly banditized northern regions.

Re curtailing emigration by heads of desperate Mexican families, NAFTA has utterly failed-- not just missed the mark, not lagging, but _fallen on its face_ failed.  Not only not reduced, not only not slowed the growth, but _accelerated the increase in immigration_: closing on 6 million desperately poor, marginally literate or outright illiterate Mexicans since 1996, here to merely feed their families. We have put these people in an impossible situation, placing them between bandits or gangsters at home and coyotes and a shadowy, sh*tty existence in El Norte separated from their families. Between the devastation of rural Mexico and a low-end America that has already been Mexified into a wasteland of sh*t wages, sh*tty public services, ERs as primary care clinics, schools overwhelmed by an underclass that has doubled SOLELY because of this colossal botchjob of a policy that no one on either left right or center will address squarely.

Kind of like that other international botchjob, eh?

We on the left are willing to call BS on Bush's colossal failures in Iraq. When will we admit that NAFTA and the mass emigration it spawned amount to a similar failure that is devastating this nation's working families, blue-collar communities, schools, health infrastructure and state and local budgets? For shame.

Speaking of BS, could we please dispense with the fairytale that "retraining" accomplishes anything for 50 year-old laid-off workers. We've heard that stuff now for 30 years, and all the retraining programs tried in that time have not made a whit of difference.

Josh Patashnik is the dissappointment.  He really doesn't understand how hard hit Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana have been hit in the last 5 years.

Nafta was one thing and most of us agreed with this.  It was a small step towards integrating Mexico and Canada into a larger trading block.  But as teplukhin2you points out it really hasn't worked to create jobs in Mexico as expected.

i think the significant drawback to Nafta is that you still have crazy Mexican laws that make it hard for large corporations to invest.  And this failure is driving Mexicans into the US looking for jobs.

But in the US there have been huge amounts of jobs that moved, not only to Mexico, but to China and other Aisian Countries where investment is cheap.  You have no idea how many manufacturing jobs have left this country.

In addition, most of the Democratic plans for Equal Opportunity and Diversity are implemented at companies.  When these companies relocate to Mexico and Aisa, there is no Equal Opportunity.

Barack Obama would have to be an idiot not to recognize the loss of jobs in the midwest, or to fail to respond to this.  Teplukhin2you hits it when he points our how inane it is to talk about re-training to a 50 year old.  Is that what Josh wants?