"Open trade and open borders": Wikileaks releases excerpts from Hillary's long-missing Wall Street speeches

I wonder if this Wikileaks dump was in the works for this afternoon all along or if it was rushed out to try to give the media something juicy to talk about besides … well, you know.

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It was planned for today, I’m guessing, simply because there isn’t much that’s sensational in the excerpts from her speeches featured in one of John Podesta’s leaked emails. This section is worth flagging, though, both for the right and the left.

*Hillary Clinton Said Her Dream Is A Hemispheric Common Market, With Open Trade And Open Markets. *

My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 28]…

*“Secondly, I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade already under the current circumstances, you know, that Inter-American Development Bank figure is pretty surprising. There is so much more we can do, there is a lot of low hanging fruit but businesses on both sides have to make it a priority and it’s not for governments to do but governments can either make it easy or make it hard and we have to resist, protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade and I would like to see this get much more attention and be not just a policy for a year under president X or president Y but a consistent one.” [05162013 Remarks to Banco Itau.doc, p. 32]

She’s talking about trade there more so than immigration, but obviously the free flow of labor across borders is a key part of what she has in mind. The left will probably find her comments more scandalous than the right for the simple reason that Team Clinton really makes no bones about being for open borders in their public comments on the subject. Remember this from a few weeks ago? Remember Hillary vowing to build on Obama’s executive amnesties by allowing the illegal-immigrant parents of DREAMers to reside lawfully in the U.S.? Even by the usual Democratic standards, she’s an open-borders shill par excellence. It wouldn’t surprise me, frankly, if her team nudges Hispanic media to notice this passage as proof that she’s as pro-immigration in private as she is on the stump.

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The “open trade” part is more of a problem. Ryan-style conservatives will find that reassuring, but Trump-style nationalists will take it as a reminder of why Clinton must be defeated next month. And more importantly, so might some Bernie fans on the left. Hillary’s done a solid job lately of consolidating her party. The Quinnipiac poll that was released today showing her ahead by five points nationally is noteworthy for how much she’s gained among the 18-34 group in the last few weeks at the expense of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein:

A lot of young progressives who were wary of her have evidently decided recently to suck it up and back her in the name of beating Trump. But that’s due partly to the fact that she spent months pandering to them in the primaries on trade. She claimed she had changed her mind on TPP and now opposed it, and she even began to make some anti-NAFTA noises despite the fact that it’s Bill Clinton’s signature that’s on that law. She can’t afford to lose those lukewarm progressives again. Team Trump should be beaming out these “open trade” remarks online and in interviews all weekend. Although, at this point, they might have trouble getting anyone’s attention because of … well, you know.

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In other news, Hillary also sounded pretty excited about single-payer health care in one of these speeches, which might help smooth any ruffled feathers on the left over trade. I guess she and Trump have something in common after all.

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Beege Welborn 5:00 PM | December 24, 2024
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