Josh, you are not alone I feel the same way.. I believe if the reporting was fair people would make a fair choice. But Obama is like the Media's small child, in their eyes he can do nothing wrong. On the other hand if Hillary says something wrong they are relentless, But when Obama says something that is insulting to the People of Small Town America they are quick to forgive whith a explanation from him that he should have used different words, as if an insult is served up better with whip cream... Hillary has always been for the working class and I it seems that the media has made the voters feel as if a vote for Hillary would be a wasted vote. They want people to jump on the Obama Bandwagon. I will vote for Hillary in the General Election if she is the Nominee, and if she is not I will not vote.
Factcheck.org: Obama's Mailings
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Update, Feb. 26: Quotes from Hillary Clinton that are favorable to NAFTA mainly date from her days as the first lady, but as we noted last November, her views shifted before she began her run for the presidency. In fact, she was calling for tougher trade rules soon after she and her husband left the White House.
The Obama campaign has pointed reporters to a quote in early 2004, in which she said, "I think on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America." But the Obama aides fail to note the full context of that statement. Clinton was giving a long discourse on the need to "revisit" old trade agreements to add tougher standards, consistent with her current position. The occasion was a news teleconference on Jan. 5, 2004:
Q. Senator, do you feel now that maybe some of the past trade deals that have been passed need to be revisited and maybe have provisions for environmental standards and health standards and labor standards added to them?
Clinton: I've always thought that. ... [All] too often the rules that have been set up to govern trade are not enforced in a fair and effective manner when it comes to American interests. And we have a really important stake in trying to make sure that labor and environmental standards become global and are not just left in one part of the world to the exclusion of the rest of the world. So I think that we need a re-thinking of our trade policies. ...
Q. Do you feel NAFTA and GATT should be revisited?
Clinton: ... I think we have to enforce the trade rules that are inherent in both NAFTA and GATT.
We also note that Clinton's statement that "on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America" is supported by many economists, however unpopular that view may be among Democratic voters in Ohio. Economist Anil Kumar, with the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, summed it up in a 2006 paper by saying, "On balance, researchers have found NAFTA a slight positive for the U.S. as a whole." And the Congressional Research Service, summarizing four studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, the World Bank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the United States International Trade Commission, found "modest" but "positive" effects:
CRS, Feb. 4 2004: [By] most aggregate measurements, NAFTA has had only a modest, but positive, effect on the U.S. and Mexican economies and tends to reinforce long-term trends already evident by its inception.
Obama himself has said much the same, as the Clinton campaign quickly pointed out in a mailer of its own (which we also found misleading, because it omitted Obama's criticisms of NAFTA while quoting only his praise).
The Health Care Mailing
The second mailing that Clinton criticized is one we dealt with Feb. 4. It attacks a feature of Clinton's health plan that would require individuals to obtain coverage. We said the mailer "lacks context" and stretches the facts, but we can't agree that it is "false" as Clinton says.
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