At the risk of being thought "dewy-eyed," I would have to say that this afternoon's events in the Senate justify the president's snark about Senator Professor Warren's being "a politician." He's right. She is. And, today, she was a better one than he was.

The Senate voted 52-45, missing the 60-vote threshold, to not limit debate on whether to proceed with a bill granting the White House authority to speed trade deals through Congress, which is opposed by many of Obama's fellow Democrats.

At its most basic, this was a demand by what Howard Dean used to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party" to be taken seriously, to have its issue taken seriously, and to exact a political price from anyone who declines to do so. The president's counterpunching on the TPP has been patronizing and, it now appears, ineffective as well. I'm not sure exactly whether this has slowed down substantially the runaway train that is the TPP. But it likely guarantees a full debate, a full airing of the issues, and if our corporate "trading partners" find the democratic process an inconvenience, as they do in so many ways in their own countries, they can sit back or pound sand.

(As far as our future leaders go, Marco Rubio skipped the vote and both of those Tea Party populist heroes, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, voted to give the tyrannical president this power.)

The TPP looks like a big enough turkey all on its own, and why the president has chosen this particular issue on which to go to knives so vigorously with his progressive supporters leads me to wonder if it isn't just a way to guarantee him some nice sinecures when he leaves office in 2017. Now, though, we will have the debate, and both sides of the issue will get aired, and he will have to work with Mitch McConnell to whip up enough support to keep the TPP out of the ditch. If that inconveniences him, he can take a number and wait on the pound-sanding line behind the Vietnamese moguls who are paying people five bucks a day. He still might win; it's a plutocrat's world right now, after all, and they're on his side here. But, there is a lot you can say about how he got beat today, but he didn't lose to anyone who's "dewy-eyed." He lost to a Massachusetts pol. Happens.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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