The Dems on Trade

In today's Boston Globe, Robert Kuttner reports (approvingly) that the Rubin-Summers wing of the Democratic Party is losing ground:

In the Senate, five of the six Democrats who picked up Republican-held Senate seats have joined a new populist caucus, insisting on fairer trade rules. Tuesday and Wednesday, business oriented Democrats invited three Clinton veterans, Gene Sperling, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, to House Ways and Means Committee hearings to defend the old trade agenda, which has produced chronic trade deficits and hollowed out American industry. These worthies called for a "new consensus" -- more deals to ease off-shoring production, sweetened by a little more public money to help workers displaced by trade. Most Democrats weren't buying it.