The The Obama campaign has been notably quiet about the sacking of Mark Penn and related trade affairs. But that doesn't mean they won't put forward others to chastise them for it. This afternoon, the campaign hosted a conference call with Indiana State Rep. Ryan Dvorak and Teamsters president James Hoffa to talk smack on Penn and Clinton. Hoffa says retaining Penn in any sort of advisory role is still questionable:
I think she has a credibility problem, and this latest I see with MP really raises questions about her credibility. She says she's going to vote against it. [...] You can't have a guy on your payroll working for a foreign nation, working for Colombia, and she says she's going to vote against it [...] I call on her campaign to end relationship completely. The smartest thing she can do is jettison him.
Hoffa added that Clinton's stance on trade issues, with or without the Mark Penn incident, have been a concern for the Teamsters. "NAFTA is a shadow over her that isn't going to go away," he said. Dvorak also emphasized her posturing in the 1990s as compared to today: "Hundreds of activists that I know would have been overjoyed to have the support of the first lady in the '90s. That support would have been welcome, but it simply didn't happen."
Asked about whether Austan Goolsbee should also be axed for the Canada incident, Hoffa maintained that there is a major difference between a top adviser taking $300,000 from an anti-union foreign government and Goolsbee's meeting. While he acknowledged that the Goolsbee incident is "not smart, he should never have done that," he added, "Mark Penn, he's getting paid to lobby. The economic adviser just had some type of meeting. Someone on the payroll should have enough sense."
Meanwhile, the Clinton camp has responded with an official call-out over Goolsbee, sending out a press release titled: "Clinton Campaign Invites Obama Campaign to Add Austan Goolsbee to Indiana Call TODAY." I'm figuring the Obama camp isn't going to bite, but if they were, one could count on some hot surrogate warfare.
--Kate Sheppard
