NAFTA - Ohio is not Texas

Oh man, I would so much rather be posting to The Pickle than getting my soul crushed under a particularly heavy stretch of business school, but alas, I haven’t been able to. I could tell you what I’m learning about optimal capital structures, but then you’d leave and never come back. Apologies. I’ll try to get a few good posts up over the next few days, as the presidential nominating contest accelerates for a moment.

For now, consider this. If you saw the debate in Ohio last week, you undoubtedly noticed that, when pressed on their anti-NAFTA positions, both Obama and Clinton had difficulty sounding really convincingly convinced. This makes sense – they are both smart people who understand that protectionism is not sustainable, and the way to compete against cheap labor in a globalized world economy is to invest in education and innovation. What if Obama had said that, instead of going after Hillary on the subject?

Barack really only just needs to win one of the big states tonight, I think. If he wins one, she has to get out, doesn’t she? (Note – PA is seven weeks away, which is almost as long again as it’s been since Iowa.) Well, we’ll look at that question in more detail once the results are in. But in the meantime, Texans and Buckeyes vote and the final volley of polls threaten us with 2 more months of campaigning, so it’s a good time to ask what might have been. How would the race have unfolded had Obama staked out a more balanced position on trade? Surely, it would have made it very difficult – perhaps impossible – for him to win Ohio today, where many blue-collar workers – communities – have been killed by free trade. For that matter, it might have made it very difficult for him to win Ohio in November, and perhaps the conversation ends there. But NAFTA has written a different story for Texas – a largely positive one, featuring economic growth and job creation. It also could have helped him with Hispanics in south Texas, a group that will certainly be talked about tonight by the best political team on television. So it’s possible that, in a tight contest, that could have netted him a few percentage points.

Here’s hoping he doesn’t need them.