SE-SW freeway blocked by anti-TPP/anti-Trump protest
On the 14th of November, the No Lame Duck Uprising blocked a portion of the SE-SW Freeway used by members of Congress on their trips between the US Capitol and area airports. They were protesting against the rise of racist Donald Trump while reminding members of Congress not to attempt to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
With the TPP dead barring a dirty backroom deal with Trump, the No Lame Duck Uprising retasked their protest to oppose oligarchy as represented both by Donald Trump and by global trade deals like the TPP and its proposed corporate courts.
One of the major victories of the antiglobalization movement was forcing both Hillery Clinton and Donald Trump to run on anti-TPP platforms. No matter which one won, the TPP would probably be dead if not ratified by Inauguration day. As far back as 2014, one of the TPP proponants was quoted as saying the TPP had to be done "quickly, before a rising tide of popular opposition can sweep it away.
When the TPP could not get the votes to be ratified during a normal session of Congress under Obama, pro-TPP lobbyists, the US Trade Representative's office, and the US Chamber of Commerce all laid plans to use the post-election "lame duck" Congressional session to ratify the TPP. Even before the election however, GOP members of Congress were saying the votes were "not there" to use their votes to enshrine a trade deal Obama wanted for some reason to be his legacy. The 2015 "fast-track" deal for how the TPP was to be ratified was passed with mostly GOP votes, but those votes were not there for the treaty itself before or after the election. Only the combination of a Hillery Clinton victory with a lot of GOP members of Congress losing their seats would have made a "revenge" lame duck TPP ratification very likely.
The rise of Trump is a bitter price to pay for the defeat of the TPP, now called "dead" by Congressional leaders and the Washington Post. For that matter, Trump has historically been as big a liar as Hillery Clinton ever was, and is a "dealmaker." Thus the possiblity that the US Chamber of Commerce will offer Trump a deal to "Fenty out" and flip-flop on the TPP is only slightly less likely than the same thing happening with Hillery Clinton. Barring such a flip-flop however, the TPP was effectively flushed when the last pro-TPP candidate dropped out of the running for the GOP nomination. On the Democratic side, Sanders was militantly anti-TPP, and Hillery Clinton had to put aside being one of the originators of the deal, claim the final product was no good, and follow suit. Probably the failure of Hillery Clinton to convince people that she would not let the TPP pass in a lame duck session contributed to her defeat, and thus to the catastrophic rise of Donald Trump and his white nationalist chief of strategy Bannon. Had the Democrats nominated Sanders he would have been considered the more reliable candidate on trade, and always he polled 5% higher than Clinton or better against Trump.
