The Daily Background
| Clinton’s dirty little anti-Obama AFSCME mailer [with photos]
by Arlen Parsa
AFSCME PEOPLE, a Washington DC-based lobbying and PAC group is spending unknown amounts of money to send thousands of early state voters a mailer which slams Senator Barack Obama’s health care plan, which it says leaves out 15 million Americans.
AFSCME is The American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, a powerful union group that has long been involved in politics.
The mailer, which many see as the dirtiest direct mail piece yet to surface in the race for the Democratic nomination, quotes John Edwards in its attacks on Obama’s plan. The problem? AFSCME has declared its support for Clinton– not Edwards– prompting both the Obama and Edwards campaigns to react furiously.
“There have been a lot of misleading tactics and tricks in the last few weeks, but we’ve just never seen anything like this before,” said Edwards’ Iowa director. “It’s fine to have an honest debate about policy, but Iowans deserve better than planted questions and campaign fliers designed to fool them.”
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The mailer had appeared in Iowa last week, but it is now surfacing in New Hampshire as well. It is unclear if AFSCME plans to send the mailer to voters in Nevada or South Carolina, two other early contests in the Democratic race. One Iowa voter described it as “one of most peculiar mailings I’ve received.”
The Daily Background obtained a copy of the mailer in New Hampshire on Monday.
The mailer, which claims that Obama’s plan leaves out 15 million Americans, is also being criticized as being misleading on its key claim. The Washington Post has written of Obama’s plan, “It could be a struggle for Clinton to find someone who wants health insurance but doesn’t qualify under the Obama plan, because it’s not clear such a person exists.”
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Even some AFSME unionists are upset with the mailer. “This is definitely hypocritical, absolutely,” an Iowa AFSCME activist told the Huffington Post recently.
“It’s a desperate attempt to attack [Obama] for unfounded reasons. It’s a shame they stooped so low.”
[…] Orikinla Osinachi. wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAFSCME PEOPLE, a Washington DC-based lobbying and PAC group is spending unknown amounts of money to send thousands of early state voters a mailer which slams Senator Barack Obama’s health care plan, which it says leaves out 15 million … Read the rest of this great post here Posted by admin […]
You should watermark those.
Y’think so, do you? Maybe you’ll come up with a nice watermark logo for me then.
[…] which has endorsed Clinton and has been stooping to low levels to support her candidacy, is considering joining the […]