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Mark Penn on the General Election | 134 comments (134 topical)

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Did Obama say the same thing about Hillary? (5.00 / 2) (#21)
by BigB on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 03:06:38 PM EST
BTD, I don't understand why you are singling this out. Obama has been saying for months that Hillary has high negatives, that you cannot start off with half the country being against you, that he will get Hillary's supporters but she will not get his supporters, that she will say and do anything to win, and so and so forth.

And, you are offended by what Mark Penn is saying?

This si what I don't understand. Obama says all kinds of things about Hillary that if she were to eb the nominee the Repuplicans will use against her. Yet, if Hillary's campiagn says anything against Obama somehow that is not kosher.

I think it is stupid and harmful (none / 0) (#24)
by Big Tent Democrat on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 03:12:18 PM EST
And I called out the Obama campaign for the same thing before.

[ Parent ]
It speaks volumes about the Clinton campaign... (5.00 / 1) (#81)
by sar75 on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 04:15:25 PM EST
...that they haven't let Penn go.  Are there any Clinton supporters who think he's doing a good job?  

I have no trouble with operatives who play hardball. But you need to play it well, and he clearly doesn't.

[ Parent ]

Obama's whole schtick is that HRC is divisive (none / 0) (#54)
by Ellie on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 03:45:27 PM EST
The same 99.9% of people who hear Obama and his team saying over and over that HRC is "divisive" -- and taking that slapped-on attribute as FACT that she can't win -- don't know who the hell Mark Penn is who said off the cuff that Obama can't win.

I'm trying to do the emotional math on this but it has to start with some realistic idea of what math is.

I'm not AS mad at Mark Penn for an off the cuff statement about electability that Obama's been beating silly on the stump about HRC for months about stuff she didn't even do. (People just hate her, trust me, doesn't sit with me as a plank on a campaign.)

Whether it's grown-up math or some emotional quantifying, it can't be the half=assed half=math that Pug-friendly media use when, eg, ascribing half the blame to a milifraction of Dem behavior to egregious GOP malfeasance (eg trying to pin half the Abramoff crap on Dems).

And it certainly can't be the half-assed bean-counting TeamO's making everyone go cross-eyed over how to count MI over FL or FL over MI, whichever goes their guy's way.

[ Parent ]

haha (none / 0) (#71)
by mindfulmission on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 04:02:52 PM EST
I'm not AS mad at Mark Penn for an off the cuff statement about electability
Seriously?  Off the cuff?  Have you been paying attention to anything that Penn has been saying for months?

One of the main things he says is that Obama can't win because he hasn't won certain state primaries.  It most certainly wasn't off the cuff.  I don't think that Penn knows what "off the cuff" even is.  He is a strategist - everything he does is in the form of messaging.

[ Parent ]

I've been deciding on HRC and BO (5.00 / 1) (#98)
by Ellie on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 04:33:32 PM EST
I never heard of Mark Penn until recently.

All of these consultants who've been surfacing according to the latest bit of douchebaggery don't interest me.

There's a bigger onus on Obama to run the kind of campaign he promised would bring about a new era of post-partisan politics.

You inow, the kind that does away with the tactics of hiding behind hired mudslingers like he's been doing.

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt to have the intelligence and creativity to show leadership on important issues. He's not doing that but hiding behind the muck slingers more as the days unfold.

Hanging back while others do his dirty work isn't New Politics, i think he's a total fraud.

[ Parent ]

If you haven't heard of Mark Penn (none / 0) (#104)
by Mark Adams on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 04:52:58 PM EST
then you haven't been paying attention AT ALL.

It's implicit in your comment that you are also holding Obama to a higher standard than Hillary.

[ Parent ]

Obama claims to have a higher standard than HRC (5.00 / 1) (#110)
by Ellie on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 05:00:54 PM EST
I'm taking him at his word that he's bring CHANGE and new politics to DC.

His higher standards is what he promised, in fact guaranteed by saying he's the one to make over politics as we know them now. It's the centerpiece of his campaign. It's what he's been "inspiring" people with.

But it's what he's NOT DOING -- more and more obviously by the day, and bottom-dealing worse than his rivals (or enemies, as his supporters seem to regard them).

HRC has only said she's experienced with how things go in DC and that she can beat them. I believe she can.

[ Parent ]

hmmm (none / 0) (#107)
by waldenpond on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 04:54:52 PM EST
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not just suggest Ellie was low-knowledge.

[ Parent ]
Heehee, it's more accurate than the other charges (none / 0) (#115)
by Ellie on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 05:05:08 PM EST
I actually admit to my ignorance not only on the rules and inside baseball, but on two candidates who weren't my top choices.

I've been keeping an open mind on HRC vs Obama especially on what those individuals promise and actually try to live up to during the primary.

Obama's been disappointing me but I've been seeing more and more of a silver lining in "divisive" HRC.

As for being low in the know, I freely admit to coming from a long line of blissfully happy idiots. :-)

[ Parent ]

Not everyone cares about the engine (none / 0) (#129)
by cymro on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 06:30:19 PM EST
Saying that someone MUST have heard of Mark Penn if they have been following the campaign is like insisting that everyone who is selecting a new car MUST know all about all the mechanical specs of the engines of the cars they are evaluating. It's just not so.

Likewise, someone can follow the candidates and their debates, their positions, the polls, the primary results, the delegate counts, the superdelegate debate, the MI and FL fiasco, etc. without needing to know anything about the faceless administrators who are the engine of the campaign behind the scenes.

Campaign activists and avid blog consumers might find this hard to believe, but not everyone thinks like they do, or cares about the same minutiae.

[ Parent ]

A difference... (none / 0) (#135)
by sar75 on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 06:25:36 AM EST
...there's a difference between arguing that one candidate is more electable than another, and pointing out why.  But as far as I know, no one on the Obama campaign has said, flat out, that Clinton is unelectable. His supporters do all the time, and I, one of them, think they're wrong.

As I've said time again here, I think that the structural advantages of the Democratic candidate are just so huge that it's hard to see either one losing.  Just wait and see how this economy develops over the next seven months.  How a Republican wins in an environment when only 1/3 of people think they're better off now than they were eight years ago (same as 1992, and that number has more to drop) is hard to imagine.

[ Parent ]

Mark Penn on the General Election | 134 comments (134 topical)

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