Among the more prominent exchanges released in the latest, 27th, Wikileaks release of Podesta emails is a thread from March 2016 which discusses a Politico article tilted "Clintonites: How we beat Bernie on trade", and which reports that “Clinton faced internal pressure from her Brooklyn headquarters to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal she helped craft as secretary of State.”

Senior Clinton strategist, Joel Benenson, is quoted in the piece as saying:

“Voters agree that we have to compete and win in a global economy and that means we have to make things in the United States that we can sell to 95 percent of the world’s consumers who happen to live outside of the United States. What the data from the exit polls says is these voters were more aligned with her fundamental view of trade.” * * * Clinton instead pushed back on Sanders’ opposition to the Export-Import Bank, and doubled down on the idea that America needs to compete and win in the global economy. "We engaged with him on trade more forcefully," Benenson said. In the end, "I guess he came off as an economic isolationist.”

The article prompted Gene Sperling, former economic policy assistant to both Bill Clinton and Obama to say:

“Do not get our spin here. Why we not hyping claw back, ROO, out front on steel, tough enforcement on China?! Was this just her not talking to any of us and off on her own take?(But Joel is in there ) please clarify."

To which, a clearly angry Tanden replies:

“Is Joel off reservation? Does he not get that this story makes Hillary seem politically craven at best or a liar at worse? Or if this is campaign position, can I object?”

She then adds: "Hard to say she believes what she says when Joel is spinning that she doesn't mean what she is out there saying. Her language was pretty tough last week."

Finally, she concludes that "Sanders or trump can move on this."

* * *

And they probably would, if underlying policies were a deciding factor in this presidential race, which has devolved to little more than a campaign of voting against the more hated candidate.