NAFTAGate 2: Barack Obama backs off NAFTA opposition, admits being deceptive

From this:

In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.

"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake"...

Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered...

In other words, he was intentionally being misleading about his position on the trade deal. This shouldn't be surprising considering the first round of NAFTAGate, and also considering that BHO supports Bush's SPP.gov, aka "NAFTA on Steroids". He even spoke in code when coming out for that secretive and highly questionable Bush trade scheme. The fact that BHO supports Bush's SPP has, as far as I know, never been mentioned by anyone except me and Obama.

Related to BHO's latest admission, The Nation's John Nichols isn't happy (thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/330911), but he also offers this questionable bit:

If Obama takes the economic issue that white working-class voters best understand off the table, he creates a huge opening for McCain in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

If he'd said "one of the... issues", that would be correct. However, illegal immigration is a related issue that probably resonates more loudly, but it's one that The Nation supports.

Politics · Wed, 06/18/2008 - 15:43 · · Importance: 9