The Intersection

The bitterness index

According to a memo from officials with UNITE Here International Union, the Transport Workers Union and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters carried on Time.com, Hillary Clinton supported permanent normal trade relations with China, citing a May 2000 report by Agence France Presse and a CNN report from April 2000, in which she said, "It is in the interests of America and American workers that we provide the option for China to go into the WTO."

In China, children as young as 12 work up to 15 hours a day in factories, according to a June 2007 article in the British newspaper The Guardian by John Carvel, and workers putting in 16-hour days are paid significantly less than the 55-cent-an-hour minimum wage, according to a January 2008 article in the International Herald Tribune by David Barboza, which says "worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies," including Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, Barboza reports, spent $9 billion on goods from Chinese factories in 2006.

These appalling conditions all exist after "factories have improved immeasurably," according to Alan Hassenfeld, a Hasbro executive quoted by Barboza. Which invites the question, how bad were Chinese labor standards when Hillary Clinton served on the Wal-Mart board of directors from 1986 to 1992? She was still praising her experiences with Wal-Mart in 2004, according to a March 2006 Associated Press article by Beth Fouhy.

The Associated Press reported on March 20, according to an ABCNews.com blog entry by Jake Tapper, that Hillary Clinton held "at least five meetings in 1993 aimed at helping win congressional approval" of NAFTA.

"She was totally supportive of NAFTA" is how one unidentified woman attending one of the events described Clinton's efforts in 1993, according to Tapper.

I don't presume to know if typical Pennsylvanians are bitter or not. But they certainly have every reason to be, when factories close not because Pennsylvanians expect too much in pay or aren't hard-working enough but because the manufacturing sector can pay children in the third world pennies an hour for 15-hour and 16-hour work days. And they have every reason to let the Second Amendment or religion be the sole factor in determining their voting preferences when Democrats like Hillary and Bill Clinton abandon or "triangulate" away from the historic concern of the Democratic Party for defending labor rights.