Rumpled Mark Penn, Clinton Pollster, Goes Back to Battle
'Gosh,' he asks, would Obama want to meet Ahmadinejad?
In the hands of longtime Clinton strategist Mark Penn, a poll is a deadly weapon. Following the commencement of hostilities between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over the Illinois senator’s comment that he would enter into talks with rogue foreign leaders, for example, Mr. Penn quickly settled on the explanation that Mr. Obama was desperate.
“Gosh, you would really need to do a lot of groundwork before you would agree to meet with somebody like Ahmadinejad, who has even denied the Holocaust,” Mr. Penn said in a voice so soft that his barb almost seemed sweet.
Mr. Obama’s campaign, he said, had revealed “some level of desperation about not having moved in the polls. And frankly a lot of people have given them the advice ‘oh, just go ahead and get her.’ And so he’ll see whether or not that is more successful than going forward with his policy ideas and the new politics, which is where he started.”
For more than a decade now, Mr. Penn, 53, has functioned as the Clintons’ left hemisphere, drafting and interpreting meticulous and incessant surveys to furnish them, along with his other clients, with the market-tested language and policies to get them into power—and keep them there.
In the words of Doug Schoen, his polling partner for more than 30 years in the firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, “Mark is somebody who is very, very comfortable with quantification. He is very comfortable with numbers and very comfortable to be able to see things in black and white.”
One gets the impression, talking to Mr. Penn, that he’d be happy enough dealing with data and nothing else.
“I don’t like campaigns,” said Mr. Penn in a recent interview, slumped back on a white couch in his office, fidgeting with his glasses and keeping his BlackBerry at finger’s length. “No one should like campaigns. I love the work of figuring out what people are thinking. And I love the application of that.”
And yet, since even before the official launch of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, Mr. Penn has seemingly been everywhere, running strategy meetings and churning out polls while becoming the cherubic public face of the most intimidating campaign going. He’s a fixture in post-debate spin rooms, mixing it up with his counterparts in Harvard forums and tirelessly making the case for Mrs. Clinton’s electability in newspaper editorials.
The inevitable end-of-summer surge in public attention to the presidential campaign will also coincide neatly with the September release of Mr. Penn’s book, Microtrends, a Tipping Point-style collection of essays about small-but-influential demographic groups he thinks could change society. Next Page >
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Obama was desperate last week? Right. Dream On in your Spin Delusions.
1. Clinton attacked his position in the debate, and then she attacked him personally the next day (naive and irresponsible).
2. When he turned that back on her on a dime, and added the absolutely trenchant "Bush-lite" term. It summarizes her foreign policy perfectly, especially now that she has turned against her previous support for urgent top-level diplomacy.
Clinton is playing politics with our foreign policy again, just like she did when she voted to support Bush in 2002-2003, and to stay the course in 2004.
Senator Byrd and others had plenty enough information to make a rational decision to oppose the war. Only irresponsible political maneuvering caused Clinton to support it.
3. When things started getting really hot, she pulled a victim stunt to change the subject and put the spotlight on herself by unbuttoning her blouse and intentionally setting off a frivolous firestorm by making sure the Washington Post started analyzed the "issue."
Cheap political tricks, left and right.
Despite her enormous intelligence, that's what another Clinton presidency will bring. In the good-times 90's they were vastly more innocuous. In our much more serious times, they will lead us on to further tragedy.
This man is the Pollster. We need a leader who can look beyond the polls, whose positions arise from his or her conscience and his or her judgment. Unfortunately, this pollster has the Clintons in his thrall.
Happily, American has a better option.
Well said, Tom.
It's a different world and we need someone with a "fresh" eye to see it through.
The question from the debates was, "Would you be willing," not "do you hereby accept an invitation?" "I'd be willing" is a perfectly legitimate answer, and Penn's litmus tests for requiring that our enemies first agree with us before we'll talk with them is ridiculous.
So, Hill has a Rove, eh?
She is soooooo "Shrummed".
And soooo DLC/20th Century.
having israeli-first sympathizers pulling the strings of our executive branch hasn't worked in america's best interests for the past six years. "penn" is another unamerican spy, craving power to dominate those not his kin. his presence makes clinton's aspirations seem corrupt and doomed to disaster as much as bush's tenure has been. another aipac driven lieberman/wolfowitz/perle/libby clone.
blech. if i believed the voting would not be rigged, i would now lean distinctly toward anyone but clinton and the OTHER republicans. she is a power-hungry victim-mentality puppet directed by israeli-firsters and corporate lobbyists.
i dearly hope she loses. israel does not deserve america's support. closeted israeli-firsters and their sycophantic, rapture-loving, hyperchristian warmakers are a menace to the integrity and well-being of the united states of america.
Hillary is now 22 points ahead in todays tracking poll! NBC and the Wall St Journal has her ahead 21%s! DOUBLE DOUBLE DIGITS! Thats like being ahead by 96 points in football or 21 runs in baseball. An insurmountable lead! She could DROP 15% POINTS and still kick ass! Even her number one hater, Dick Morris concedes that she is unstoppable. But with truly brilliant fellows like Penn doing the numbers and the best strategist in politics, Bill Clinton, protecting this lead....only a fool and a sucker would even consider betting against her!
Happy days are almost here again! And its gonna be women that will make this happen. We will have our first female President and BOTH CLINTONS WILL BE BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
Those that don't like this ...TOO BAD!
FRAME it this way: The front runner in the marathon for the democratic nomination should expect to be tested by the labs as well as the voters. Corporate, PAC and questionable donations are the steroids of the primary election cycle. Will HRC be "clean"? Remains to be seen.
isn't penn on of the names coming out among those phone records of the dc madam??
is that true, he's one of the people of the 10,000 on the records??
pollsters just spin these candidates so they say what they thing we want to hear. penn is the best of them. hillary's way ahead and on her way back here to DC.
as far as the dc madam lists of names, who cares....
Maryscott O'Connor
Owner, MyLeftWing Blog
Dear Maryscott:
You know that I am a Black man who supports Hillary Clinton and I was called a "monkey" at DailyKos before I was banned from participation there, after I strenuously defended Hillary Clinton's candidacy at DailyKos.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/3/195440/248
This week, you have threatened to ban me from MyLeftWing because I refuse to stop criticizing Markos Moultisas and the virtually all-white DailyKos.
http://www.myleftwing.com/showComment.do?commentId=244483
I NEVER stop criticizing people who have called me a "monkey".
When I broke the story this week that Moulitsas opposed gays in the military, I did everyone a public service.
http://www.northernstar.info/articles/?id=16416
If we suddenly discovered this about another Democratic Party personality, then that person would be toast, I hope.
Today, the Washington Post reports that YearlyKos was an all-white affair (again), and one woman was quoted as asking, "Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR200708...
In the Washington Post, another man said, "Bernita Smith, an African American blogger from Atlanta, is one of the Chicago 17, and raised funds herself to attend the conference. "I was completely surprised -- shocked even. The political blogosphere isn't as white as the people in this convention.""
To ask me not to talk about Markos Moulitsas during the week of his national annual conference is unreasonable. EVERYBODY is news during the week of their annual conference and not all of the news will be positive, as the WaPost article demonstrates.
By now, you know me well enough to know that there's no point in threatening to ban me. Like everybody else, I write what's on my heart at the moment.
Believe it or not, I've got half a dozen stories on Moulitsas that I posted at my own blogs and did not post at MLW out of deference to you. I watch my site meters (you can look at them too) and everybody is talking about what a liar Moulitsas is, for claiming to be a Gulf War veteran when he spent his service years in Germany.
You said, "This is NOT AN ANTI-DKOS SITE."
http://www.myleftwing.com/showComment.do?commentId=244483
I'm sure that during slavery, there were people who said, "I'm not going to tolerate my house being treated like a stop on the Underground Railroad!" But, there were those whites who saw the need for the Underground Railroad, for the purpose of supporting abolition, and even at risk of their very lives. In my experience there are very few whites like that in the "progressive" blogosphere.
The people at DailyKos are rejoicing over your threat to ban me, because they don't like the fact that you previously upheld the First Amendment and provided Black people a place to speak openly about the apartheid at DailyKos, without retribution.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2007/8/7/12925/28280/146#c146
After the "Kossacks" take over MyLeftWing, perhaps they'll take Poland then they'll march on France and Great Britain. That's why I keep writing about them, and I won't stop as long as the white supremacist blogger threat persists.