Hillary Clinton has been trying really, really hard to pretend that she had nothing to do with the passage of NAFTA during her husband's administration. Even worse, she is pretending that she has always been opposed to it.
Of course... historical facts say otherwise:
According to NBC's Meet the Press, in 2004, Clinton said, "I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America."
And here is another one:
In her memoir, Clinton trumpeted her husband's "successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA."
And another one:
And in 1998, Bloomberg News reports that she praised corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." Another direct quote.
And another one:
Here's another direct quote from Hillary Clinton on NAFTA. The Associated Press reported on 3/6/96 that she said, "NAFTA is proving its worth" and later praising NAFTA as "a free and fair trade agreement."
And another one:
Here's another direct quote from Hillary Clinton on NAFTA from a speech she gave to the DLC in 2002:
"We all know the record of the DLC, the Progressive Policy Institute and, of course, the Clinton-Gore Administration. The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady Bill. Family Leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets. Charter schools. The Earned Income Tax Credit. The welfare to work partnership. The COPS program. The SAFER program. All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves. Those ideas were converted into policies programs that literally changed millions of lives and, I argue, changed America."
I hope that Barack Obama has every one of these quotes ready in the debate tomorrow.
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