David Geffen, formerly a Friend of Bill, is now a leading supporter of Barack Obama. Of Hillary's machine he says, "That machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective."
Probably true, but Team Hillary isn't going to take that stuff lying down. Arianna details the blunderous response of Clinton's team:
It didn't take long for Clinton Inc to prove him right. Not long after Dowd's column hit the streets, "that machine" whirred into high gear with Clinton Communications director Howard Wolfson firing off a press release condemning Geffen and urging Obama to denounce him:
While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.
If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.
The thing is, Geffen is not Obama's "finance chair" nor his "principal fundraiser" as Wolfson also claims. Indeed, as Geffen told me this morning: "I have no official role in the campaign. None whatsoever." Which makes it kind of hard for Obama to "remove" him.
And it gets better over the flip...Speaking of Obama, the videos from the Boxer/Obama event will be up in a few minutes.
At dKos, pontificator's got a rec'd diary on Obama's response. Apparently those folks now how to deal with attacks:
Update: Well, the Obama campaign responds rapidly, and we'd add, pretty much just as sharply. From Robert Gibbs, the campaign's communications director:
We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters.
It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom.
It is also ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because 'he's black.'"
In all honesty, Clinton was in a glass house. I don't know what they were thinking in attacking Geffen. It also risks alienating Geffen's friends, Katzenberg and Spielberg (SKG of Dreamworks SKG fame), who are still giving money to Clinton in addition to Obama. Apparently Obama knows how to build a team.
