President Obama's feeling the heat -- from Democrats ahead of Friday's vote on trade legislation. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Democrats feel backed into a corner on today's high-stakes vote on Obama's trade deals. And they're letting it show.
The House of Representatives is expected to take a very important vote Friday on legislation known as fast track. It would give Obama leeway to negotiate two massive deals with Pacific Rim nations and Europe. Broadly speaking, Republicans support the plan. Democrats, not so much.
Labor unions, those well-funded foundations of all that is good for the Democratic Party, absolutely hate the trade deals. Unions have promised to spend cash, lots of it, to take out any Democrat who supports Friday's vote.
So as Obama works with House Republican and Democratic leaders to shove fast-track legislation through on what's expected to be a razor-thin vote, most of the 188 House Democrats feel their career hanging in the balance.
And they're increasingly attacking not just the trade deal, but their own president.
The vitriol started with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). As the Senate prepared to vote on fast track last month (it passed 62 to 38), the liberal darling was so vocal about the secrecy surrounding Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership deal with 11 other countries that she earned a rare diss from Obama.
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