Also, going to protests (which are particularly useful for breaking media blackouts) can be a drag if you think they'll be filled with people you don't want to spend time with. Protests can be great, of course. If protests develop a critical mass where no sub-group seems to dominate and there is a kind of emergent shared purpose, then concerns about who you're walking the streets with tend to dissolve. This was the case with Occupy protests after a while. There were so many specific groups buffered by enough "ordinary folks" in the crowd that no one worried about whether their group's particular voice was being unjustly marginalized--all the groups were in the soup.
However, when the protests are still at the "awkward stage" of movement-building, having too many movements in the broth may be disruptive to smooth and rapid growth of the shared movement. To the extent that TPP-affected movements can leave each other alone to move independently in their activism, this is less of a problem, but as soon as mass coordination becomes the aim, it will become necessary to skillfully negotiate between the diverse priorities of the various groups.
And if the potential "pollution" from fellow progressives isn't off-putting enough, there's also pollution to contend with from some Republicans, particularly of the " crabgrass ", conspiratorial and Tea Party variety. As with the NSA shredding of the 4 th Amendment , the indefinite detention-enshrining National Defense Authorization Act of 2012-2014, and the new trend towards targeted assassination of American citizens and their 16 year old kids , the TPP has both bi-partisan support and bi-partisan opposition. Michelle Bachmann, for instance, is opposed to fast-tracking the TPP and thus is a particularly polluting part of the TPP opposition. It's humiliating for those with liberal or left sensibilities to admit that sometimes Michelle Bachmann is closer to reality than Barack Obama--though kudos to the liberal-left Daily Kos for making exactly this admission.
The Halo Effect
This brings us to a related social psychology construct: " the halo effect "--or you could call it a "halo/horns" effect since it's about how we lock people into good or bad evaluations and then judge other less knowable aspects of their character according to our biased preconceptions. The halo effect can also potentially extend to interpreting people's motivations for certain actions, and thus to judging the worth of the actions themselves.
Michelle Bachmann wears "horns" in progressives' minds, and deservedly so. She has said a great number of embarrassingly false things, and her atrocities largely match her absurdities. Whenever there has been a clear wrong side on some issue, she has usually embraced that side with creepy enthusiasm. Knowing that she is against the TPP (or at least against granting Obama fast-track authority for the TPP) can thus arouse liberal and progressive suspicions. The fact that all kinds of lovable progressive heroes take the same position doesn't necessarily diminish the effect of her pollution. With Bachmann on board, the more Tea Party-traumatized Democrat types may be tempted to thoughts like, "What if she wants to crash the TPP to undermine Obama's presidency and thus enable the most insane frothing-at-the-mouth Republicans to advance their top-down class war agenda?"
Of course it doesn't really matter whether or not this is Bachmann's motivation. Bachmann has such a tenuous understanding of cause-and-effect and other basic facets of reality that her motivations should be considered irrelevant. It is much saner to ignore her than to treat her as a reverse oracle. In spite of these good reasons to bleep over Bachmann's position on the issue, the halo effect makes it more likely that her involvement will elicit progressive discomfort with opposing the TPP.
By the same principle, the fact that beautiful, radiant President Obama is supporting this terrible legislation (and also calling for the anti-democratic fast-tracking process designed to slip this legislation in under the radar) creates a lot of social cognitive static for liberal progressives. Those progressives who haven't yet become Greens or other disillusioned refugees from the two-party system probably voted for Obama in 2008 and/or 2012. They are thus are tempted to think: "He's such a smart guy, he gives great speeches and writes great books. I mean he gets it, and he won two elections against Republicans, so maybe he has a long term plan to make the TPP work for freedom, justice, equality, environmental sustainability and all things good!"
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