Mark Penn lecturing the Obama campaign. Tells him not to "return to the base." [View All]

[madfloridian]

Will someone tell this man to just shut up and sit down? He was supposedly let go from the Clinton campaign, but he still hangs around with Bill.

He is trying to tell Obama how to campaign, when he is one of the ones who mucked up Hillary's so badly. He really did, you know. She trusted him, and he gave terrible advice.

From the LA Times:

Mark Penn, Clinton strategist, warns Obama -- and the media

Mark Penn, the high-priced strategist who did such a good early job of launching Hillary Clinton's Democratic presidential campaign to doom at the hands of Obama, tells CBS.com he's worried that the Windy City gang will repeat the mistakes of the last two losing Democratic presidential campaigns by returning to the base after their convention instead of staying more on the convention message of centrism.

He is warning Obama not to return to his base too much.

Now that reminds me of when Mark Penn wrote about why Al Gore lost...it was because he did not toe the DLC line and because he went populist.

Mark Penn's analysis of why Gore lost....

Instead of running as a New Economy Democrat, Al Gore used an old-style populism that reduced his appeal rather than expanded it. The message prevented him from reaching the swing voters who could have pushed him over the top. Gore narrowly won the popular vote with this message by piling up large wins in states like California, where extra votes fail to count. But the message sent him tumbling backward in key border states, in his home state and, finally, in the electoral college. Liberal positions on social issues along with populism and big government positions took what could have been a substantial win and turned it into a draw. Had Gore combined his positions of conscience on social issues with a new vision of the role of government, he would have carried a larger percentage of upwardly mobile, socially tolerant suburban men that would have helped him win.

If Gore had stayed with the "old style populism"...things might have turned out differently. The will to fight would have been stronger perhaps.

More of what Penn said about Gore:

Both candidates failed to occupy the decisive center of the American electorate. This is not surprising given the failure of either candidate to break 50 percent. Voters see Gore as substantially left of center and Bush as right of center. By running as a social and big government liberal, Gore was perceived as being to the left of the Democratic Party. In contrast, Bush was viewed as being more to the center than the Republican Party; that was perhaps the single most important element of his success.

Keep this man away from the Obama campaign. Do not let him near it. We are where the middle is, we should no longer let this group of consultants like Mark Penn make up an imaginary middle way off to the right somewhere and tell us it is where we should be.