At the invitation of the United States, 650 negotiators from 12 countries, along with numerous lobbyists, convened in Hawai`i this week to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a corporate-backed initiative largely designed to impose a pro-business regulatory structure on 40 percent of the world economy. Hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the Westin Resort and Spa in Maui, where negotiators deliberated on the extent to which corporations can sue governments in private tribunals for obstructing expected future profits. The “real intent” of these tribunals, argued Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, “is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America’s own economy and citizens.”

While this meeting puts the TPP one step closer to becoming law, it actually obscures a more fundamental–and counterintuitive–truth: Activism has generated a far more competitive and contentious battle than could ever have occurred if economic elites truly dominated policy making. The fight against TPP demonstrates the extent to which U.S. politics is more dynamic and responsive to popular pressure than the hyperconcentration of economic power in the United States would suggest.

First, consider the rarity of a single piece of legislation that can attract impassioned support from virtually every single bloc of economic elites. TPP’s champions included the pharmaceutical industry and Hollywood, Silicon Valley and agribusiness, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the fossil fuel industry. Wall Street CEOs and the National Association of Manufacturers found common cause in advocating for the TPP. And why not? As economist Dean Baker explained, “The TPP is essentially a pact in which the Obama administration invited industry representatives to get together a wish list and see what they could impose on the other parties to the deal.”

Second, this remarkably broad industry support converged with full-throated advocacy from elites tasked with projecting U.S. power abroad. From John Kerry’s tawdry pro-TPP appearance at the facilities of war contractor Boeing, to Ashton Carter’s headline-grabbing claim that “passing TPP is as important to me as another aircraft carrier,” the heads of the State Department and Pentagon promoted TPP as a way to maintain leverage in Asia. Ex-CIA director David Petraeus, who presided over Iraqi torture centers as an Army general, argued that “the fate of the trade pact is also tied closely to U.S. national security.”

Given that the richest 0.1 percent of the United States owns roughly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; the top 0.01 percent is responsible for over 40 percent of federal election financing; union density hovers at its lowest level in nearly a century; political scientists have concluded that “average citizens have ‘little or no independent influence’ on the policy-making process”; and two-thirds of the public thinks the federal government has become a “special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests”–how did Congress vote on Fast Track?   If economic power translated roughly evenly into political power, one might expect the House of Representatives to vote in favor of Fast Track by, say, 400 to 20. In fact, the House approved of Fast Track by a margin of only 218 to 208.

Put another way, only 28 of 188 House Democrats, 15 percent, voted in favor of the president’s initiative, complicating a portrayal of the Democratic Party as simply a corporate-controlled monolith. It suggests that a strategy to enforce greater party discipline, thereby obstructing the goals of a seemingly unstoppable coalition corporate and military factions, is actually feasible. After all, the TPP must still be ratified by the 12 countries’ various parliaments, including Congress.

Building off the strengths of the campaign against Fast Track may ultimately lead to the TPP’s demise in the coming months. First, despite the corporate media’s bias, the debate around TPP was far more honest and informative than any other trade-related discussion. Take perhaps the country’s most influential economist, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who supported NAFTA in 1993 on the foreign-policy consideration of “helping to keep free-market reformers in power in Mexico.” He argued that “the anti-Nafta people are telling malicious whoppers. The pro-Nafta side is telling little white lies.”

At early stages of the TPP debate, Dean Baker took to his blog to correct Krugman regarding the TPP’s importance not as a tool for trade but for enforcing pro-corporate regulations. Krugman subsequently argued in the Times that the TPP’s “skeptics have on balance been more right than wrong,” while “the administration evidently doesn’t feel that it can make an honest case” for the agreement. Former NAFTA proponent Robert Reich and NAFTA architect Brad DeLong similarly voiced opposition and concern.

Second, the fight against TPP has involved the broadest, most diverse array of organizations ever engaged on trade policy. Millions-strong netroots groups including CREDO, MoveOn, RootsAction, and Just Foreign Policy joined forces with environmental organizations like 350.org and Sierra Club. Religious groups and every national labor union in the country were among the thousands of institutions opposing the TPP. Online campaigns shared millions of emails, petition requests, and social media posts, helping spur a change in public opinion in the face of an avalanche of corporate-driven disinformation. A NYT-CBS poll in June showed that a majority–55 percent–opposed Fast Track.

Third, tactics like Congressional outreach actually worked: Representative Cedric Richmond (D-LA), for example, initially supported the TPP, but when approached by Obama, he informed the president that “people have been contacting me now for about seven or eight months, [and] 100 percent of them have been asking me to vote no.” He continued, “I told the president in our conversation that he was the first call asking me to vote for it.” Floods of calls and emails to legislators led to a significant, if temporary, setback to Fast Track. 

A diverse coalition continues to take Congress seriously as an arena of struggle, exploring the possibility of defeating Fast Track supporters in primary elections. More immediately, activists are exploiting rifts on the Hill as the TPP is ironed out. Global Trade Watch noted that 13 Fast Track supporters signed a House letter urging the U.S. State Department not to more leniently reclassify the human trafficking record of Malaysia, a TPP participant. (TPP could not be Fast Tracked with Malaysia included unless Malaysia were reclassified.) Other issues, like the TPP’s strict patent protections on life-saving medicine and its lack of currency regulations, open similarly promising approaches to breaking apart a relatively small group of Democrats.

As the TPP debate moves closer to primary elections and into a context in which all three Democratic presidential candidates express opposition or doubt over the TPP, the political cover of standing behind a lame-duck president’s initiative will wane. And by engaging politicians against the odds, a broad-based movement is proving that democracy may indeed prevail over money.

Keane Bhatt is an activist and media critic based in Washington, D.C.