Mark Penn's strategizing...are we seeing it again?

[madfloridian]

He's not overtly part of Hillary's campaign this time around. He is connected strongly to a polling firm used by the DNC. He's known for dirty tricks, and he's known for his ugly policies.

Repost from not along ago, because I don't think Penn is done yet.

He is no longer with Hillary Clinton's campaign. But he's involved with a company that does Democratic Party consulting.

But now he’s come in from the cold, at least sort of. The private equity firm he oversees, the Stagwell Group, has purchased SKDKnickerbocker, a consulting firm that is synonymous with Democratic Party politics. In an interview with The Daily Beast on Thursday, Penn said he’ll be giving advice on how to grow the business but will still be watching his former client from the sidelines. “I’m on good terms with both of them,” he said, referring to the Clintons. “But I am not advising the campaign.”

He waited until after Tuesday’s debate to talk about the campaign because he thought the criticism of Clinton had gotten “out of sync with reality.” After months of seeing television clips of her under stress, at Chipotle, or answering questions on emails, he said the debate gave Clinton an opportunity to be seen unfiltered, and “as the leader she is.” While she has tacked left on key issues, like trade and the environment, he credits her with standing firm on a no-fly zone for Syria, refusing to reinstate Glass-Steagall in a nod to Wall Street, and pushing back on capitalism and the strength of the American economic system. “The Hillary who won the debate took a lot of the best of ’08 and combined it with some of the best new issues of ’16,” he said.

Penn is also teaching a graduate class in polling strategy.

Mark Penn is no longer her campaign guru, but he's still testing the waters for Clinton.

He is teaching a graduate course at George Washington University, “Interpreting and Strategizing with Polls,” where he currently has his students crafting polls and memos addressing the question of how Clinton should position herself in what so far is shaping up to be an outsider’s election.

Students in Penn’s class, which a POLITICO reporter attended last week, are in the midst of formulating a poll “to determine the state of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and to determine the effectiveness of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign messages and how it affects the general voter.”

I'm glad he is hands off on campaign policy because these excerpts from his strategy for winning in 2008 were very questionable.

We win women, lower classes, and Democrats (about 3 to 1 in our favor).

Obama wins men, upper class, and independents (about 2 to 1 in his favor).

Edwards draws from these groups as well.

Our winning strategy builds from a base of women, builds on top of that a lower and middle class constituency, and seeks to minimize his advantages with the high class democrats.

If we double perform with WOMEN, LOWER AND MIDDLE CLASS VOTERS, then we have about 55% of the voters.

Actually gearing a campaign to the lower classes and to one gender is a terrible idea.

A partial summary from later on in the memo:

1) Start with a base of women.

2) Add on a base of lower and middle class voters

Contest the black vote at every opportunity. Keep him pinned down there.

The Atlantic has more on Penn's 2007 memos

Penn Strategy Memo, March 19, 2007: More than anything else, this memo captures the full essence of Mark Penn's campaign strategy--its brilliance and its breathtaking attacks. Penn identified with impressive specificity the very coalition of women and blue-collar workers that Clinton ended up winning a year later. But he also called Obama "unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun," and wrote, "I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values." Penn proposed targeting Obama's "lack of American roots."

This guy needs to keep his distance from any campaign with those attitudes.

Just a thought, just an idea based on past actions.

It's hard not to think of the the man in the middle.

[tularetom]

1. We can only hope

Remember the result of the last time he strategized for her - President Barack Obama.

She values loyalty above competence so a little brown nosing will keep Penn on board.

[davidpdx]

5. +1

She has a tendency to hire some incompetent people in her campaign.

[AtomicKitten]

2. Recommended.

[madfloridian]

3. .....

[Samantha]

4. What a wonderful, informative thread

Loved it! Good work.

Sam

[madfloridian]

11. Thanks.

Penn's ideas are not worthy enough to be called Democratic.

[merrily]

6. Penn, Shmenn. The buck stops at Hillary and Bill and also the campaign surrogates

like Cuomo and Ferrara. Each other them could have said, "Thanks, but no thanks, Mark. I am not going to say those things" and/or "This campaign is not going down that ugly, unacceptable road."

If it had been my campaign, I would have told him never to suggest anything like that again or he'd be fired. Or maybe I would have fired him the first. I'm not sure as I sit here. Either way, my campaign would not have gone down that road, ever.

There is also the story from Game Change about Bill tell Kennedy that the only reason Kennedy was backing Obama was that Obama was African American. I've seen posts here saying it was not confirmed, etc. However, it was never denied, either, and sounds a hell of a lot like Ferrara's comment. I don't think the authors made it up.

[madfloridian]

7. Sounds like her other strategists put their feet down...no more Penn.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/hillary-clinton-mark-penn-2016

There's no telling if Penn will again play an über-role in another Hillary campaign. Last year, the Washington Post reported it was unlikely that Penn—whom many Clintonites faulted for the 2008 loss—would again be in the inner circle. Penn, though, reportedly did play a modest role in helping Bill Clinton craft his gangbuster speech at the 2012 Democratic convention—a sign that he had not been excommunicated from the inner circle. And as one enthusiastically pro-Hillary Democratic strategist says, "A lot of people waiting to join the campaign are first waiting to see what happens in the Mark Penn primary. Including me." That is, will Penn be involved in the campaign and, if not, who will be running it?

"There are a ton of people who say they won't get involved if Mark is around," another Democratic operative says. "And there are other people who don't want to get involved anyway because the 2008 campaign was so unpleasant. There were so many centers of gravity. People were constantly playing inside politics to have influence." Hillary Clinton's Penn problem extends beyond Penn. The campaign that Penn came to symbolize was, as this strategist recalls, "full of people from the first Clinton administration who were watching out for their own interests. This led to a leakier environment and a more difficult workplace. It was a pretty miserable place."

......"I would do anything for Hillary," one Democratic operative says. "I love her. I think she'd be a great president. Anything. Except work with Mark Penn."

[merrily]

8. Brock and his/her PAC are handling that kind of thing now? Cause someone sure is.

[madfloridian]

10. Well..

Penn's in a position to have an influence on polling matters. But let's hope not.

[Wilms]

9. ^

[madfloridian]

12. Thanks.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

13. She'll definitely lose