AFSCME, But That Doesn’t Mean I’ll Tell You

Political Punch has gotten its hands on yet another Iowa mailer being sent by a pro-Clinton union that attacks Obama and makes it look like the attack is coming from Edwards.

You can see the mailer HERE.

The outside of the mailer has a "take a number" dispensary, and your number is "15,000,000."

Resembling a similar mailer sent by AFSCME, this flier says, "There are 15 million reasons why Barack Obama’s health care plan is not up to the job … John Edwards said that if we go with the Obama plan, ‘as many as 15 million Americans would be without coverage.’"

The Obama campaign has taken issue with the claim that as many as 15 million Americans would go without health insurance under Obama’s plan, an estimate from some non-partisan experts who say the number is largely due to the plan’s lack of individual mandates.

But here’s the rub — AFSCME has long opposed individual mandates as well.

So, the mailing has nothing to do with the substance of the charge — it has to do with defeating Obama and, one can only assume, making Edwards look bad in the process as well.

In a conference call set up by the Obama campaign last week, the executive director of the AFSCME chapter of Illinois, Henry Beyer, and a former official with the AFSCME chapter of Iowa, Carter Woodruff, pointed out the curious nature of the AFSCME mailing, since, as Beyer said, "we’ve always opposed individual mandates. Woodruff said the the mailer was a "desperate attempt to attack" Obama and "hypocritical."

The Clinton campaign said it had nothing to do with this mailer…or the previous one.

– jpt