WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Documents published by WikiLeaks earlier have portrayed Clinton as a defender of trade deals in speeches to audiences that were heavily weighted with free-trade advocates who have donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s campaign.
"Getting on the wrong side of [organized] Labor on the only issue they care about has ramifications on the ground in these early states," pollster and political consultant John Anzalone wrote in an April 2015 email that was released on Thursday. "I say we suck it up and be as definitive as possible from the beginning that we don’t like these deals."
With hindsight, the email exchange is notable for its prescience in that it took place nine months before voters in the US states of Iowa and New Hampshire became the first to cast ballots for their respective Democratic and Republican party nominees.
At the time, Clinton was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars giving speeches to bankers, Wall Street investors and other big-money sponsors of her career in politics.
When the presidential campaign began in earnest, Clinton found herself sandwiched between candidates on the right and left — Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump — who railed against existing trade agreements as US job killers.
The October 2015 email exchange boiled down to a debate between three top Clinton aides who now lead the Clinton presidential campaign — the chairman, the manager and the spokeswoman. At issue was how Clinton could minimize damage to her presidential campaign when the time came for her to back down.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta advocated a soft approach, in which Clinton would say she supports limits on presidential authority to negotiate trade deals.
Spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri proposed that Clinton soften her free trade enthusiasm by criticizing the procedure used to negotiate the TPP trade agreement.
The third and toughest opinion came from Manager Robby Mook, who argued that Clinton should simply oppose the TPP as a bad deal for American workers — a position that Clinton ultimately adopted.
In the email string, Anzalone, the pollster and consultant, explained why he sided with Mook.
"It sends the strongest signal not only to [organized] Labor but to where voters are on trade," Anzalone wrote. "They feel they always get the raw end of the deal. I am less concerned about historical blowback on her [Clinton’s] past position than this issue eating us alive for being on the wrong side."
President Barack Obama supports the TPP agreement and has indicated that he will submit the agreement to Congress for an up or down vote before leaving office.
Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had made accusations of a Clinton flip-flop part of his campaign, saying that the former first lady will say she opposes TPP to get elected and then change her mind if she makes it to the White House.
