For all the oxygen currently being sucked out of the room by the 2016 presidential campaign, there is still an incumbent administration with a country to run – and it's setting up an intraparty fight that could take place even before the next president is sworn in.

It's looking increasingly likely that the Obama administration is going to push for a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership during a lame duck session of Congress following Election Day. Known as the TPP, this is the 12-nation trade deal that has become a lightning rod this year thanks to the efforts of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former reality television star Donald Trump, among others. President Barack Obama has made the pact a centerpiece of his agenda while he remains in office, and the administration is setting up events across the country to make the case for it.

"Right now, I'm president and I'm for it," Obama said recently. "And I think I've got the better argument." Progressive groups, meanwhile, are already making noise about preventing a lame-duck vote on the deal.

This, of course, puts Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a tight spot. She was once for the deal before coming out against it during the primary campaign; her current line is, "I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election and I'll oppose it as president."

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The left, though, wants an ironclad promise that Clinton will not only be against the pact generally, but will be openly and vocally against a lame-duck session vote on it. Even if it means standing against a popular president of the same party, they want Clinton to put the kibosh on any talk of the trade deal passing, now and forevermore.

At this point, there's little reason for Clinton not to provide such a promise. Back when Sanders and Clinton were negotiating over the language of their party's platform, I felt that the Clinton camp was making a strategic error in not letting Team Sanders have its way, and the same dynamic still holds today: The upsides of the pact are too small to make dealing with the political downsides worthwhile.

After all, the numbers regarding the economic benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are nothing to write home about. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, by 2032, "U.S. annual real income would be $57.3 billion (0.23 percent) higher than the baseline projections, real GDP would be $42.7 billion (0.15 percent) higher, and employment would be 0.07 percent higher (128,000 full-time equivalents)." That's pretty meh. Other economists have found bigger or smaller effects, sure, but none of them discovered an economic bonanza that will be unleashed upon the deal's completion.

In fact, the best argument for the deal isn't even economic: It's that the pact is a key foreign policy tool in Asia. Still, I'm not convinced all that much is on the line.

Meanwhile, the voters and organizations who oppose the deal are vocal and intense in their pressure, while those who support it likely won't abandon a candidate for passing on any particular pact. No one really says, "well, I was going to vote for Clinton until she refused to support [insert trade deal here]." Plus, the current majority of Americans who think free trade agreements are harmful – at least according to one recent poll – may have it wrong in the grander sense, but they're right in that modern trade deals often aren't about trade at all, but protecting corporate profits at the expense of the little guy. There's not a lot in the Trans-Pacific Partnership worth making it a hill upon which to die.

The Clinton team has already made some unforced errors regarding trade during the campaign, and it didn't help undercut the impression that she merely follows the wind on the issue by appointing a Trans-Pacific Partnership booster to head her transition team this week. On the flip side, though, she has embraced a progressive economic agenda up and down the line, and hasn't given in to the temptation to moderate it in the search for GOP voters who aren't Trump fans.