Former secretary of state and now presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is slowly showing more claws to win more votes, but at the expense of her former boss, President Obama.
Clinton showed her fangs as she denounced the trade agreement, also known as the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership of the Obama administration, which she blatantly said that the president should "listen to and work with" Democrats to improve the deal and ensure better protections for American workers, according to the New York Times.
She has totally backtracked on an earlier statement that the agreement is the gold standard for "free, transparent, fair trade," the publication added.
To strengthen her presidential bid and gain the full support of Democrats, some of whom had stopped the trade deal, Clinton said that without the alterations, "there should be no deal."
Whitehouse aides and Obama's former senior adviser David Axelrod were disappointed with her remarks.
Axelrod told the New York Times that Clinton is on a sort of "vise between the work that she endorsed and was part of and the exigencies of a campaign."
He cited that at a time that President Obama needed all the support for this measure, which he wants to leave on as a legacy, Clinton's statement did not help move it forward.
Clinton needed to distance herself from the trade agreement pushed by President Obama because she wanted the support of the trade unions that are against it, The Washington Post said in a report.
Other cool-headed Obama supporters, like former White house communications director Anita Dunn said Clinton is slowly transitioning from loyal supporter (of the Obama administration) to a presidential candidate, and there would really be open disagreements with her and the president.
But Dunn added that her political strategy could brew "tension, misunderstanding and sometimes disgruntled feelings," within the ranks of the Democratic Party.
