WTF?!? Mark Penn Op Ed: Clinton's Problem Is She Could Not Raise Enough Money To Pay Me

[kpete]

The Comedy writes itself
Among the Clinton post-mortems in the NY Times today is a self-delusional column by Mark Penn. Stating not so implicity, I fucking kid you not, that Clinton's main problem is she couldn't raise enough money...to pay Mark Penn.
http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2008/06/comedy-writes-itself.html

Op-Ed Contributor
The Problem Wasn’t the Message — It Was the Money

By MARK PENN
Published: June 8, 2008
Perhaps the most frustrating part of losing a close race is thinking about what else you could have done to win. You replay the campaign over and over again in your head. As an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, I sure do.

The conventional criticisms of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign are these: she had no message; she ran just on experience; she should have shown more of her warmer side; she was too negative; President Clinton’s campaigning hurt her; and she presented herself as inevitable. It is amazing she got any votes at all.

So let’s take on a few of the myths. Even schoolchildren got the message that Mrs. Clinton was ready to be president on Day One. As a result of her campaigning and ads, people saw her as a strong commander in chief, a good steward of the economy and a champion for people who needed one.

..............

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/opinion/08penn.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[yourout]

1. Penn you dipshit......the reason she "couldn't raise enough money" is because of you.

[Jennicut]

2. Unbelievable. The real problem is no one In Hillary's circle took Obama seriously

Really, she could have dumped Penn early on and gained some needed millions. What a friggin a-hole.

[dana_b]

53. Bingo!!

You are so right. There was no way that an upstart junior Senator with less than a full term of experience was going to win this!! Damn, it really demonstrates how smart this man and his people are.

edit* as a side note, she deserved better than what she paid for.

[stray cat]

3. Maybe if Mark Penn believe in the message and not just his money.

[blogslut]

4. Whine for your life, Mr. Penn

You sucked all her money into your black hole of bullshit. Go back to promoting your other horrid clients and shut the hell up.

[Nite Owl]

5. The reason she lost was because of

the people she hired--like him. They had no clue what the people were thinking. All along she thought it was the crazed, wild-eyed lefties in the party who didn't like her vote on the IWR and too late they saw it was any sane person in the country. It was the message or lack of it. If she had not followed her high paid advisors and listened she would have been unstoppable.

[Why Syzygy]

19. If you read the entire editorial, it is full of delusional thinking.

One minor point, is he gives "women" too much credit, assuming the gender issue could have done it for her if it had been handled correctly. Read it. Unbelievable.

[shadowknows69]

6. Clinton supporters I hope you're beginning to see

That if these are the kind of bozos Hillary would have surrounded herself with as President, it might be a better thing that she didn't win. Let's not easily forget the damage the Bush cabal of incompetents has done. Part of being a good leader is hiring good help.

[Cha]

42. It's a damn good thing she didn't win..and

if we have mark penn to thank for part of that..then so be it.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Amazing...... This guy is should write for the Onion or the Spoof

What a comedian!

[Patsy Stone]

8. You stay classy, Mark Penn.

This is just covering his ass so someone might hire him for something (anything) in the future.

"You are to blame here, not me. All of those criticisms I mentioned, the ones which are directly related to my poor planning and awful ideas, those weren't really the problem. The problem was you people. You said you supported her, but you didn't buy my crappy message strongly enough to open your wallets. If you'd only done that, I could have been paid, and we might have won."

I wouldn't hire him to run the campaign for the local dog catcher.

[Botany]

23. Did I ever tell all of you that you are my Fav?

I will always remember seeing David Axelrod of Obama, Joe Trippi of Edwards, and Penn
of Clinton being interviewed after Iowa. Axelrod and Trippi looked good and sounded
fine but Penn was just awful. Pasty, sweaty, nervous, and a poor speaker who was so
f***ing bad a thought the other 2 were going to laugh in his face. Oh well he got his
$20 million and now he go back and work for his firm that has WalMart, Blackwater,
McCain, and some union busting company as clients.

[mod mom]

31. He reminds me of the character in Monte Python's Meaning of LIfe,

that explodes.

I know that is mean but Penn is one despicable character:

"In '06, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57% of Campaign Contrib to GOP"



Polling Czar



After the 1994 election, Democrats had just lost both houses of Congress, and President Clinton was floundering in the polls. At the urging of his wife, he turned to Dick Morris, a friend from their time in Arkansas. Morris brought in two pollsters from New York, Doug Schoen and his partner, Mark Penn, a portly, combative workaholic. Morris decided what to poll and Penn polled it. They immediately pushed Clinton to the right, enacting the now-infamous strategy of "triangulation," which co-opted Republican policies like welfare reform and tax cuts and emphasized small-bore issues that supposedly cut across the ideological divide. "They were the ones who said, 'Make the '96 election about nothing except V-chips and school uniforms,'" says a former adviser to Bill. When Morris got caught with a call girl, Penn became the most important adviser in Clinton's second term. "In a White House where polling is virtually a religion," the Washington Post reported in 1996, "Penn is the high priest."

Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter & Gamble's Olestra from charges that the food additive caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. PSB introduced to consulting the concept of "inoculation": shielding corporations from scandal through clever advertising and marketing.

In 2000 Penn became the chief architect of Hillary's Senate victory in New York, persuading her, in a rerun of '96, to eschew big themes and relentlessly focus on poll-tested pothole politics, such as suburban transit lines and dairy farming upstate. Following that election, Penn became a very rich man--and an even more valued commodity in the business world (Hillary paid him $1 million for her re-election campaign in '06 and $277,000 in the first quarter of this year). The massive PR empire WPP Group acquired Penn's polling firm for an undisclosed sum in 2001 and four years later named him worldwide CEO of one of its most prized properties, the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (B-M). A key player in the decision to hire Penn was Howard Paster, President Clinton's chief lobbyist to Capitol Hill and an influential presence inside WPP. "Clients of stature come to Mark constantly for counsel," says Paster, who informally advises Hillary, explaining the hire. The press release announcing Penn's promotion noted his work "developing and implementing deregulation informational programs for the electric utilities industry and in the financial services sector." The release blithely ignored how utility deregulation contributed to the California electricity crisis manipulated by Enron and the blackout of 2003, which darkened much of the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of colluding with the Nigerian government in committing major human rights violations. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

-snip
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070604/berman


Isn't it Time for Mark Penn to Leave Burson-Marsteller?
Posted November 12, 2007 | 11:18 AM (EST)


My colleague at The Nation, Ari Berman, has done more than any journalist to shine some light on how pollster-strategist Mark Penn, head honcho at PR giant Burson-Marsteller, and perhaps the most important figure in Hillary Clinton's campaign, poses a real dilemma for the candidate. Penn heads a firm that has represented everyone from union busters to big tobacco, and more recently Blackwater. (According to a Marsteller spokesperson, it was a subsidiary, BKSH & Associates, run by GOP operative Charlie Black, which helped Erik Prince prepare for congressional hearings after his employees killed civilians in Iraq).It would seem difficult to find a more controversial client than Blackwater but Penn's firm has just been retained by Spin Master.

Who is Spin Master? It turns out that Spin Master distributes Aqua Dots, a toy that was recalled last week because it contains a glue ingredient that when ingested is broken down by the body to make GHB, the "date rape" drug, which can cause unconsciousness and even death. (The Consumer Product Safety Commission says the number of children sickened by Aqua Dots has risen from two to nine in the past week.)

Penn has repeatedly stated that he has no direct contact with controversial clients like Blackwater or unionbusters. But what about the good old-fashioned American principles of responsibility and accountability -- principles which his candidate likes to invoke on the campaign trail? As Ari Berman has pointed out, the dilemma for Clinton is that Penn's firm represents many of the interests whose influence she has vowed to curtail. But as kids get sick from poisonous toys, how can Clinton keep in her corner, as her chief strategist, a man who has even limited involvement with a firm like Burson-Marsteller? Isn't it time that Clinton ask Penn to choose: my campaign to make this a safer country or a PR firm which has too many clients undermining that agenda?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katrina-vanden-heuvel/isnt-it-time-for-mark-pe_b_72206.html

[DangerousRhythm]

35. Mr. Creosote!

Wow, I didn't even read this whole thing yet, but what a scumbag.

[mod mom]

38. yep-that's him- bloated robber baron

[bleever]

51. 'B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing,"

to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups.'

Gee, they wouldn't have done that in an election, would they?

[mod mom]

65. Definitely one of many dubious characters that the Clintons surrounded themselves with.

I am so happy with the outcome of the primary.

[Botany]

9. Mark Penn = Gen. Custer

Mark Penn .... the reasons "we" lost blah blah blah

Gen. Custer .... we lost because of too many Indians

The man does have some brass balls to sound off now. They started
w/ a 40 point lead, 200 million in the bank, the biggest organization,
and @ least 200 super delegates. But Penn couldn't count delegates,
Hillary had very high negative #s, Team Obama out worked 'em, and
people wanted a change. Besides Penn/Clinton just knew it would be
over on super tuesday and when it wasn't they had no plan on what to
do outside of go negative and that turned off many voters.

[ErinBerin84]

10. in addition to thinking California was winner take all, you doufe, you gave the campaign bad PR

because all of the sane people in the campaign knew that you had to go. Wasn't he supposed to go before Texas, and then he took credit for the "3 AM phone call" and got a pass? What a jack ass.
Mark Penn: Fuck you!
Harold Ickes: No, Fuck you!

( or maybe the other way around)

Just wait...all of the campaign staffers will be more than willing to point the finger at Mark Penn when they write their books.

[AllentownJake]

11. When Ickes and Williams write their books

Penn is going to come off as the biggest fuck up in Presidential campaign history. He knows that their knives our out for him and they will rip him a new asshole. He's trying to change the narratives before the books hit the shelves.

[sfam]

24. Agreed, and I cannot wait!

Mark Penn's Op-Ed really didn't answer much of anything. There were REASONS they didn't have the fund raising leverage. Why? Because Penn went with the same old 20th century campaign. They enlisted the big money donors and got the band back together. Meanwhile, Obama, perhaps out of necessity, went to the people for his money.

Bottom line, Clinton ran the last campaign of the 20th century while Obama ran the first campaign of the 21st century.

[Cha]

49. Yeah, but ickes knew the rules but he still tried to

change them with Michigan and Florida 'cause hilary had lost. So, somebody needs to write a book on him.

[Stop Cornyn]

12. Is he literally retarded?

[shadowknows69]

14. It's mentally challenged

He's mentally challenged.

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. Clinton should sue that fucking guy

Watta bagiagaloop.

[shadowknows69]

18. That's the problem with "consultants"

Any dumb fucktard can call them self a consultant if someone is stupid enough to pay them for advice and simple tasks like, knowing the rules, making phone calls, spending your money, that any personal assistant could do

[Botany]

26. Obama had somebody like Penn (but much better) already

on his staff full time for $150,00 / yr vs Penn who was charging $20 million and
was still working other jobs too.

[my3boyz]

15. Hahahahahahahaha...now that is funny! LOL He is pathetic. He is lucky if Clinton does not sue him. n

[Why Syzygy]

16. I guess we know where the delusions originate.

That guy is either totally inept at reality perception or thinks the rest of us are STUPID.

[KittyWampus]

17. where those "high turnout primary elections" most often benefited Hillary was where a party machine

already pre-existed. It should have cost Hillary LESS there.

[natrat]

20. what about the fact that she does not appeal to honest inteligent people

[Cha]

45. They see what they want to see in her..

I'm just glad the best candidate won for a CHANGE.

[Faygo Kid]

21. Why in the world did Hillary stand by this butthead?

She just funneled money to this incompetent nincompoop. I don't get it.

You can throw McAuliffe and Ickes in there as incompetent nincompoops, as well. She was ill-served by this group of cronies.

[Diane R]

37. Because she ran a crappy campaign and should bear full responsiblity for her defeat.

[Zodiak]

54. From what I understand, Bill insisted upon it

There was an article posted yesterday about it.

[mod mom]

22. He is one arrogant pathetic asshole, isn't he?

rec'd for exposure. Let others know what a big asshole he really is.

[WeDidIt]

25. PENN, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!

She would have won if Penn didn't have his head jammed so far up his own ass that he had no clue that Democratic primaries weren't winner take all.

[The River]

44. I Was Just Aboout To Say

we should send him 1,000 Obama
bumper stickers with a note saying
"A thousand thanks for making these possible"

[bbgrunt]

27. hahahahahahahahahahahahah haah!

[Colobo]

28. What a sucker.

[charlie]

29. Well, that didn't take long

If his business takes a dive, there's good money in being TV Land's newest Expert Strategist At Large. If he's careful in parcelling out Bill and Hillary dirt, the gig can last for years. Ask Dick Morris.

It seems the Clintons have a penchant for hiring self-serving turncoats.

[Colobo]

32. The guy is a shameless loser.

[w4rma]

39. Penn likely more familiar with Republican primaries, since he most likely votes in them. nt

[Nedsdag]

30. PAYING YOU??????????????

She should be suing your fat ass for lousy advice.

[Jakes Progress]

33. I'm supporting our candidate,

but am depressed that my fourth choice instead of my third choice won.

As much as i liked Hillary, if her losing means that Mark Penn never works again, it might be worth it.

[Wapsie B]

34. He needs a good shrink.

What a delusional ass.

[Diane R]

36. She hired him, she supported him, she kept him when told to fire him, only demoted him when forced.

[Cha]

40. All about the Benjamins , eh mark penn?

No. Sorry, it was about hilary's changing message and the lies..oh, and you didn't want her to appear "human" as you were quoted in saying "human is overrated".

My friends, family and customers in our co-op here in New York saw her as a liar, dissembler, panderer, and world class whiner..characteristers the fawning mainstream media couldn't cover up.

[madrchsod]

41. the genius of mark penn

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:


have another donut cry baby


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[FredScuttle]

43. Somewhere, Bob Shrum is smiling

Finally, he can pass on the mantle of "Biggest Fuck-Up To Run A Democratic Presidential Campaign"

[Patsy Stone]

50. Yep

Earlier in the campaign I noticed these guys made him look like a genius.

[blm]

55. Don't think for a second that guys like Penn and Carville weren't feeding Shrum bad poll info

like the unbelievable "Kerry can't talk about BCCI because it confuses voters."

Shrum won in 2000 and 2004. Clinton loyalists at the DNC who never lifted a finger to strengthen party infrastructure in crucial states or secure the election process for the four years after 2000 theft, were working for somebody in 2000, 2002 and 2004, and I doubt it was for Democratic candidates and Dem voters.

McAuliffe, Penn and Carville have been working for ....... WHO?

[FredScuttle]

57. "Shrum won in 2000 and 2004"

no, he did not. Look, I'm right there with you that Gore (definitely) and Kerry (probably) won their respective elections, but Shrum is electoral Kryptonite. His losing streak goes back way before this decade:

1980: Ted Kennedy's Presidential campaign FAIL
1988: Dick Gephardt's Presidential campaign FAIL
Michael Dukakis' Presidential campaign FAIL
1992: Bob Kerrey's Presidential campaign FAIL


Bob Shrum: King Midas In Reverse

[blm]

58. Had those elections not been stolen (thanks DNC) Shrum would be considered a winner.

That's the only point I'm making.

EVERY campaign makes mistakes and the ones Shrum made were not fatal ones. They have been exaggerated and used though to explain away the awful condition of Dem party infrastructure that was collapsed years earlier in too many states.

Obama wouldn't have as great a chance of winning this year if he was stuck with a Clintonloyalist led DNC party infrastructure to tap into 5 months before election day.

Four years of Dean rebuilding party structure state by state is going to make the win probable in November.

Axelrod wasn't winning 2004 with brilliance - he's on record for advising Dem candidates for senate and congress in 2002 and 2004 to not go after Bush on Iraq and terrorism, and to stick to domestic issues. That would have made for compelling presidential debates, eh?

2008 is NOTHING like 2000 and 2004.

[FredScuttle]

60. On that we agree

Dean has repaired years of neglect and incompetence at the DNC

[blm]

61. Well, THAT is exactly where elections get lost or stolen. DNC has 4yrs BEFORE

election day to develop a winning strategy for ALL Dem candidates and voters and the presidential nominee has exactly 5 months to tap into whatever party infrastructure EXISTS already in each state.

[Diamonique]

63. ROFL!

"Finally, he can pass on the mantle of "Biggest Fuck-Up To Run A Democratic Presidential Campaign" "

LOL! Just wanted to see that again. :-)

[casus belli]

46. Nevermind his math problem, or the fact that....

he almost certainly had more to do with her primary loss than she did. This guy is completely out of touch.

Somebody buy him a copy of "proportional delegates for dummies"

[justinaforjustice]

62. Imagine a Clinton Administration Run by Penn & Company.

"he (Mark Penn) almost certainly had more to do with her primary loss than she did. This guy is completely out of touch."

Hillary Clinton hired Mark Penn -- and kept him on her campaign staff long after he had shown how worthless he was. She used millions from her campaign funds to keep him on the job. When you add in Howard Ickes, Christine Ferrero, Bob Johnson, and Lanny Davis,et. al., it's obvious that Clinton has absymal judgment and management skills. Thank God Obama came along with a superbly managed campaign and real leadership to save us from a Clinton administration full of Bush-scale incompetents!

[Danger Mouse]

47. If he were honest with himself, the title of that article would be...

'The problem wasn't the message - it was me.'

[Warren Stupidity]

48. Well great! We should beat the living tar out of McSame.

It is all about money and we are going to have a lot more than the DoubleTalk Express campaign is going to have. Donate. Donate again. What were you thinking? that aint enough, donate some more.

[ShadowLiberal]

52. This just makes him look even worse for badly mismanaging Clinton's campaign

It looks to me from the article that he's just making excuses for being part of a campaign that blew a 20%+ lead in the national polls almost overnight. It's like he's still saying "my plan was flawless even though it failed, it's those other people's faults for us losing not me".

[XemaSab]

56. Thank God we've seen the back end of that loser

:(

[Aloha Spirit]

59. Ahhh, I choked on my iced coffee this morning reading this.

[Lerkfish]

64. I said early on that Penn was doing more damage than good in her campaign.

regardless of who I wanted to win, Clinton was ill-served by bad advice on many front - mostly men, and some former republican strategists....which is ironic.

It almost seemed like intentional sabotage from within, and Penn is exhibit one.

However, ultimately the candidate chooses which advice to take, so all share some portion of the responsibility.