Pro-business as usual

So Obama and the Republicans hope to fast-track a couple of international trade deals, and some Democrats aren’t pleased. This “has scrambled the usual political alignment in Washington,” says NPR’s Scott Horsley, “putting the president at odds with many of his usual allies in organized labor.” It has “all made for dizzying change of tone,” adds Jonathan Weisman of the Times.

I suppose it’s a little unusual, if your lens on politics is pure partisan math, all red votes here and blue votes there. Dizzying it is not. Labor union staffers aren’t happy about this, but they aren’t exactly reeling in shock. They’ve come to expect this sort of thing, from presidents of whichever party.

That’s because when it comes to trade policy, the U.S. doesn’t have a pro-business party and a pro-worker party. It has a steadfastly pro-business party and a more ambivalent but still substantially pro-business party. To find a political party that offers labor its full-throated support, you have to look beyond the two major ones.