Not as bad as he pretends?
Free traders have good reason to be wary of any Presidential candidate who combines denunciations of those who outsource American jobs as "Benedict Arnold CEOs" with promises to discriminate against their companies when deciding corporate tax levels. They may take a sort of comfort from Matthew Yglesias' interesting diagnosis that "Kerry is basically lying about his trade policy".
A rightward tack during the general election following on the heels of a shift to the left during the primaries isn't necessarily anything to write home about - that's how all Democratic presidential campaigns work. The dynamics of the trade issue, however, are somewhat different, because the left view on trade is actually more popular than the centrist alternative in many of this year's key swing states.
Accordingly, the higher-profile public speeches in the Fleet Center have continued to sound skeptical themes, while the free-trade message has been delivered to elite audiences at low-profile events. There are no sure things in politics, and Kerry might change course yet again while in office; as a senator, though, he was (as John Edward tried to point out against him during the primary campaign) a consistent supporter of new trade agreements, so there's every reason to believe that the Democrats' centrist wing has already won the first major policy fight of the Kerry era.
