It just doesn't get more cynical than this. Note that we're talking about a bipartisan trade deal, thanks to 14 Democratic senators led by Ron Wyden and Chuck Schumer. If Democrats fail to regain the Senate or put their next neo-liberal candidate in the White House — or both — they will have done it to themselves through cynical moves like this.

In the 1976 film “Network,” a news anchor, played by the late actor Peter Finch, urges his television audience to open their windows and shout the infamous phrase, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Obama campaign alumni Mitch Stewart, the Battleground States Director for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, and Lydia Tran, the former National Press Secretary for Organizing for America, just launched a new astroturf campaign to promote the fast-track authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Their efforts will focus on Oregon and Washington at first because they are both export-heavy states--and because Ron Wyden (D-OR) is the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

The letter asks for a new process for reaching trade agreements in which Congress has a role in selecting trade partners and in which Congress sets up a set of negotiating objectives that must be achieved.

Approximately 600 organizations have sent a formal, public letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) opposing "fast-track" trade promotion authority and calling for a new system for negotiating and implementing trade agreements. The letter asks for trade pacts that "deliver benefits for most Americans, promote broadly shared prosperity, and safeguard the environment and public health."Read the letter here