Thread: Bill's Nafta legacy haunts Hillary Clinton

Bill's Nafta legacy haunts Hillary Clinton

By Alex Spillius in Zanesville, Ohio
Last Updated: 2:59am GMT 28/02/2008

A trade deal signed by her husband has returned to haunt Hillary Clinton as she tries to win working-class support in Ohio.

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Voters in the run-down industrial state have not been slow to remind the former First Lady that they blame the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) for a decline that has seen 200,000 manufacturing jobs disappear since 2000.

The rust belt state, which votes on March 4, could be Mrs Clinton's last stand against Barack Obama, who has won their previous 11 contests in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination.

He is closing the gap in opinion polls and has already overtaken her in Texas, which votes on the same day.

Mrs Clinton staged an "economic solutions summit" in Zanesville in the heart of Ohio's diminishing steel-producing region. Sharing the stage with state governors and industrial leaders, she launched her vision for the economy, the dominant domestic issue of the campaign.

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Democrat economists agree that the problems facing states such as Ohio are so deep and complex that redrafting Nafta would make scant difference.

But perception is all in an election campaign and Mrs Clinton faces a struggle to alter views of her husband's record.

Mr Obama got a further boost when one of the so-called super-delegates to August's party convention switched his support to the Illinois senator.

The move by John Lewis, a congressman in Georgia and a veteran of the civil rights movement, was expected to encourage others to follow suit.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ols128.xml

I watched the Democratic Debate the other night on MSNBC. They did rake her over the coals for NAFTA. She said she never supported NAFTA and they pounced on her. She called it the best thing that Clinton ever did in his Presidency. I remember NAFTA and I remember my parents just screaming over NAFTA and saying what a big mistake it was. They were right in what they were saying and it is my generation paying the price. It usually takes a while for things to really start showing up. Bush's mistakes however are showing up really fast. Listening to the debates really sheds a light on a lot of things. I find them fascinating. I hate to admit it, but it has only been the last 8 years that I ever started to take notice of anything. My childrens generation has not caught on yet. You speak to them about it and it is like speaking to blank walls. When my childrens generation starts to take notice, watch out it won't be pretty. They will soon learn when they can't get jobs and they find the illegals have them.

Another loser for mccain to defend against obama - its almost like mccain ran all along to help democrat win -he is on the side of every unpopular issue obama is against and sides with obama on unpopular issues -what a nightmare_Advisors will tell the foolish JUAN PABLO MCCAIN that he can get the hispanic vote by saying the same crap and that hispanics will not vote for black.When the elections over hispanics vote 68% for Obama -32% for mccain -at least then a bitter mccain might vote against the amnesty bother hillary and obama have promised to bring up in the first 100 days of thier presidency