Pelosi: ‘Slow Down The Fast Track To Get A Better Deal For The American People’ — Trade Deal ‘Sidetracked’ By House Dems, GOP

Astonishing, isn't it? Obama managed, in the secret trade deal for the TPP, to offend Democrats and Republicans alike, for different reasons, but to such a degree that the House slapped his wrist on the matter by a vote of nearly 3-1.

Erica Werner and Charles Babington, at AP via TPM:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House sidetracked a high-profile White House-backed trade bill on Friday, a humiliating defeat for President Barack Obama inflicted by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and dozens of rank-and-file lawmakers from his own party.

The 302-126 vote came a few hours after Obama journeyed to the Capitol to deliver a last-minute personal plea to fellow Democrats to support the measure, which would allow him to negotiate global trade deals that Congress could approve or reject but not change.

...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership might be bad for us living, working Americans (who knows; we only know of this secretly crafted deal what some people have seen fit to leak), but even worse for the nation: it would represent yet another instance of Congress's granting the President "fast‑track" authority, whereby the President may put up a bill for a congressional vote and Congress must vote it up-or-down, with no amendments. I'm sorry, but that is not the history and tradition of American legislative process, and I believe that if fast‑track were regularly instituted, it would eviscerate the "democratic" part of the democratic process. NO on TPP and NO on fast‑track: it's a two‑fer from the viewpoint of Americans seeking to retain control of their government. TPP may ultimately come back from the grave, but it appears it will at least actually be debated by Congress in (ahem) the American way.

(Look in the article at who supports this rejection: what a coalition! Jeebus, the bedfellows I find myself surrounded with are strange indeed!)