REUTERS: Pelosi Offers Hope for Colombia Trade Deal

A lot of people gave me flack for simply pointing out that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership were saying they delayed the lobbyist-written Colombia Free Trade Agreement not to stop it, but to pass it. I was merely relaying Pelosi's own words, and now Reuters finally reports what I have been saying for the better part of two weeks. Under the headline "Pelosi offers some hope for U.S.-Colombia trade deal," the newswire reports on Pelosi's latest admission that her stalling tactic is aimed at passing the deal and rewarding Colombia's murderous right-wing government:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered some hope on Wednesday for congressional passage of a free trade agreement with Colombia, but said it would fail if the White House tries to jam the deal down Congress' throat.

"Perhaps we can get some of the trade agreements through. We did get the Peru trade agreement recently in a bipartisan way," Pelosi said in a speech to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, whose members were in Washington to push Congress to approve the Colombia free trade pact and two others with Panama and South Korea.

"I've told the White House we stand ready to discuss with them how we can proceed in bringing this legislation to the floor. I said 'you want to do it the way you want to do it, it will lose. You just want to jam it down the throat of Congress, it will lose'," Pelosi said.

Again, Pelosi has been saying this from the beginning. But national reporters don't want to report that, and even many progressive leaders in Washington are trying to pretend that the delay was an entirely positive and benevolent move.

I sympathize a little bit with that latter group - we all want to believe the Democratic Party will do the right thing and tell ourselves that the party is acting in good faith. We want to believe it no matter how many times we get trampled by that same party, whether it's NAFTA, PNTR, Peru or any of the other job-killing trade deals that Democrats have rammed through Congress.

But believing that the Democratic Party always operates on behalf of the little guy on these issues is not optimism - it's delusion, especially when we see an army of former Clinton administration officials being paid with Colombian government blood money to pass this deal. On fundamental economic and corporate issues, the Democratic Party - like the Republican Party - answers to money and power - and if this deal is going to be stopped, it is going to require a whole lot of people power to stop it. Because as our Speaker of the House is saying, she's using legislative maneuvers not to prevent this monstrosity from passing, but to prevent it from losing.