Now, I myself, am a proponent of free trade.  And one of the things that has turned me off throughout this campaign is how Obama has attacked Hillary on trade issues, from the infamous D-Punjab memo on, and Hillary has responded in kind.  I do not like seeing the party pulled in a protectionist direction.

Now here, speaking to a wealthy liberal audience in Marin County, Obama critiques anti-trade sentiment as being due to some false consciousness among bitter small-town workers.  What in the heck does that say about the stance that Obama has taken on trade throughout this campaign?

And, how about you, Obama supporters?  Well, I imagine there are a handful of you who yourselves support free trade.  But I imagine that most of you, at least on MyDD, are yourselves hostile to NAFTA, the Columbia trade deal, etc.  When you argue that Obama was really speaking the truth in California, are you agreeing with him that anti-trade sentiment is due to some kind of false consciousness?

Tied to this is the defense of Obama that he was really supposedly attacking the Republican Party for exploiting wedge issues.  As this argument goes, Obama was essentially saying that the Republicans are unfairly pushing wedge issues of gays and guns and sneakily winning over Reagan Democrats, who should instead be voting Democratic in their economic interests.  But this arguments falls apart on the anti-trade issue.  The Republican Party is much more in support of free trade.  It has been sections of the Democratic Party that has been pushing the wedge issue of protectionism.  What does this say about the argument that Obama was really attacking the Republican Party (rather than, for example, simply trying to explain why he's failing to win over voters in Pennsylvania and similar states.)?

Now, in all fairness, I should add that, as a free trade proponent, I have not been that pleased with the stances that Hillary has taken in this campaign on trade either.  But I think the tone on this issue has been set by Edwards and Obama.  Perhaps I should be happy that Obama apparently doesn't believe what he has been saying on the campaign trail in the mid-west about trade.  But I am not.   Anybody who is willing to, on the one hand, go to Pennsylvania and rail against trade and then go to California and critique anti-trade sentiment as indicative of a small-town bitter mentality is a deeply flawed candidate.