Trade Traitors
James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, today called on Hillary Clinton to completely and totally fire strategist Mark Penn. Not kinda sorta, he can continue to run our message operation and participate in meetings. Not we're just going to strip him of his title but keep him in the same role. Hoffa said Clinton can't have one of her top guys pushing for a trade pact she says she opposes.
"You can't have a guy on your payroll that's working for a foreign nation and who basically is lobbying on one hand for Colombia, and she says she's going to vote against it," Hoffa said on a call with reporters. "It really hurts her credibility. I had called on Hillary Clinton to basically end his services with the campaign completely. I understand this morning he was on a conference call, that he's still calling the shots in her campaign, and I think that's devastating to her. So the smartest thing she can do is to jettison him."
It seems Barack Obama's campaign is asking for it by belaboring the Penn issue. What does it get them? It gets them this statement from Clinton's campaign revisiting the Austan Goolsbee matter: "The Obama campaign ought to have Austan Goolsbee on their call today," said Clinton's IN state director Robby Mook. "While Senator Obama was telling voters he would fix NAFTA, his chief economics advisor was telling Canadians that his position was just words. Instead of launching attacks against others, the Obama campaign should finally explain why it continues to mislead voters about Mr. Goolsbee's meeting with the Canadian government."
Ok, so tit for tat aside, why bother with Penn? Because it gives Obama's campaign the opening to hammer Clinton once again on NAFTA, of course. However flimsy the link.
"NAFTA is a shadow over her that’s not going to go away," Hoffa said on a call with IN State Rep. Ryan Dvorak.
Interestingly, Hoffa said that he wrote a letter to Clinton a year ago, saying that Penn would be a problem for him, that Penn's business ties to foreign governments would not go over well with the union crowd. He said she never replied.
"She’s ignored it," he said.
Meanwhile, during the Clinton camp's call, Howard Wolfson pushed the Goolsbee gaffe as evidence that when pressed on a controversial matter, Obama's campaign is prone to hedge, while HRC's crew took "swift action" in welcoming Penn's resignation.
Obama's advisers, Wolfson said, provided "a series of shifting answers when pressed about" Goolsbee. "That is not accountability, it is not candor and it is not transparency," he said, adding, "I think the comparison is very much in our favor."
We're looking for that letter ...
(JENNIFER SKALKA)
Um, it's not a 'flimsy link' when your top strategist, the man who is more closely tied to you and your efforts to be President than any other man alive is caught lobbying for something you state you are opposed to. It is a real problem. The reason Obama is going after Clinton is that Pennsylvania voters care about this issue in a major way and between this and her actual record on trade (supporting NAFTA and similar agreements) this is a legit issue. I mean, I know it's harder to cover than Obama's bowling game, or where McCain went to high school, but it also has the benefit of affecting actual people. So there is that.
wOW!! Mr. Penn still getting paid by the blue-collar donations given to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. What a spit on the face that must be...paying the guy who was trying to outsource your job. It seems Mr. Wolfson is on the same boat.
WAIT!! Look over there, in Beijing!!
I'll bet that Hoffa and Dvorak have absolutely no clue what the Columbia "free trade" deal was about. (Hint: It's really about tariffs.) More on Hoffa in a moment.
And after Obama hammers Clinton on NAFTA, she can turn around and nail him with his flip flopping on trade with Latin America. For all his criticism of Latin American free trade deals he publicly backed the U.S.-Peru “Free Trade” Agreement--though he did not cast a vote on the Senate floor, something we know now is something Obama frequently does.
Yes, the Obama campaign is asking for it.
The problem is that Penn is a paid lobbyist for a foreign government. Foreign governments are prohibited by law from contributing to federal campaigns in the United States, but apparently they are allowed to pad the salaries of the top strategists and advisers of a presidential candidate. Why is it legal for a foreign country to give money to Mark Penn, that would be illegal if it were given to the Clinton campaign? This is more than an appearance of a conflict of interest; it is a conflict of interest. (Goolsbee is no comparison whatsoever; he is not being paid by the Government of Canada.)