Mark Penn is Still Stupid

The most unsurprising news ever: Mark Penn is unlikely to join the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign. I wrote a post in 2008 titled "Just How Dumb Is Mark Penn." Turns out Penn is really stupid. So stupid that he became a punchline in Democratic circles. Let's count the ways.

1. Penn based his strategy on Hillary winning the nomination by taking California. Penn wasn't aware that California delegates weren't winner take all.

2. Penn convinced Clinton to not run on change. We now know that President Obama won the nomination on campaigning for change.

3. Penn made the outlandish claim that 1.7 million bloggers make a profit from blogging. Penn used no methodology on these for-profit bloggers before he published his Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Penn helped create the boring political group No Labels.

4. Penn is a clueless political operative. This memo he penned is classic Penn.

It is a vast right and left wing conspiracy. Listening to Brit Hume say that Obama is surging while Hillary failed to do X is almost comical and certainly transparent. The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun, and a third party would come in then anyway.

Penn really had his pulse on the 2008 election.

Kendrick Meek Death Watch: Latest News

The Buzz reports former Bill Clinton political advisor Mark Penn is hosting a $4,800-per-person fundraising reception for Charlie Crist.

In other news: Howard Dean made this comment to Rachel Maddow about potential seats Domocrats could pick up for the Senate caucus.

"I was calculating this morning. I think it's possible we might lose only one seat because are going to lose a bunch of seats for incumbents, but we have a chance of picking up five seats, including Louisiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, New Hampshire and whether Kendrick Meek or Charlie Crist wins."

That must make Meek feel like the Democratic Party is putting all their eggs in his basket. Democrats aren't even pretending they aren't backing Meek anymore.

Twitter Post of the Day

"Cheer up Terry McAuliffe, you can't possibly owe that witless fuck Mark Penn THAT much $$! Right? RIGHT?! Oh, Jesus, Terry, say you didn't."

Jason Linkins

Penn worked on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Penn had the brilliant idea of a California winner-take-all strategy.

The latest: At a strategy session last year, Penn reportedly said that a Clinton win in California would effectively wrap up the nomination by awarding her all of the state's 370 delegates.

As we all know, Democrats don't do winner-take-all primaries, but instead use a form of proportional representation that has been in force for about 20 years -- a fact that didn't seem to sink in with the Clinton campaign and their big-state strategy.

I have been laughing while writing this post. Want to know why Hillary Clinton didn't win the nomination? Terry McAuliffe and Mark Penn are a major reason.

The Ed Wood of Op-Eds

Mark Penn is a pollster with no concept on how to read a poll. Penn wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed on how blogging is a new job market. Speaking has someone who has been offered a blogging gig, I can say no it isn't. Penn writes 1.7 million bloggers profit from their work. Penn sites a web page for Blogworld Expo. The Blogworld Expo page say there are 12 million bloggers in America. There is no way to check the accuracy of this information.

The 12 million bloggers number conflicts with Penn's statement that there are 20 million bloggers in America. Penn cites Emarketer which says "there were some 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007." A few problems here. Penn is not citing scientific polling data. He is using numbers from marketing companies. Another problem is the numbers are old and can not be fact-checked. What was the methodology used to find out paid and recreational bloggers? What was the size of the sample surveyed? Penn's methodology was to pull pages from Google. Companies marketing aren't interested in providing scientific research. Emarketer is interested in selling their so-called research for $695.00.

There is trouble paragraph in Penn's article.

Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year.

I don't doubt that most bloggers are white males. The numbers come from Emarketer. There is no way to check the findings. I'm not sure what Penn means by "reports blogging." If Penn is implying 1 out of 3 young people blogs then he didn't read the Pewinternet study. Below is the numbers for teens, generation Y and X.

Create a blog

Online teens - 28 percent

Gen Y - 20 percent

Gen X - 10 percent

I know bloggers that get 100,000 hits a month and they work day jobs. The bloggers that get paid to blog (Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan) receive over a hundred thousand unique visitor a day.

There is no excuse for a polster to be this sloppy with data. The conflicting and questionable data proves Penn did not heavily research the subject. Penn phoned in an article and the Wall Street Journal didn't bother to fact-check. This id the Ed Wood of op-eds.

Just How Dumb Is Mark Penn

The Wall Street Journal has a must-read article on how poorly managed the Hillary Clinton campaign was run. Hillary made longtime schedule-maker Patti Solis Doyle campaign manager. Doyle never ran a presidential campaign and was later fired.

Democratic party insiders pleaded with Hillary to control Bill Clinton's racially divisive remarks. Hillary failed to do so. Democrats wondered about Hillary's competence.

The most damning problem is Hillary relied heavily on Mark Penn. The latter was hated by campaign staff and didn't understand basic facts about the primary and caucas process. Skills needed to be chief strategist.

Mr. Ickes, a rules expert, had long argued against the strategy. Last June at a meeting at the Penn home, Mr. Penn suggested Sen. Clinton would get all 370 state delegates when she won California's primary, attendees say. Mr. Ickes, they say, mocked him: "The vaunted chief strategist" doesn't know that party rules aren't winner-take-all?

Many in the Clinton campaign wanted to run on change. Penn convinced Hillary to run on her years as a Washington insider. Anyone with an understanding of campaigning knows that you don't run as an insider. Hillary could have been the Democratic nominee, if she never hired Penn.

Barack Obama Wins Nomination

The Associated Press is declaring Barack Obama the winner of the Democratic nomination.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic race that sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial divisions within the party.

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments. It also included a minimum number of delegates Obama was guaranteed even if he lost the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

Hillary Clinton's campaign Chairman, Terry McAuliffe, has been sending mixed signals to the media. McAuliffe told AP, ""I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee." Previously, McAuliffe said Clinton would not concede.

"I don't know who the officials are, but anyone can be an official in this world. I can unequivocally say as chairman of this campaign that until someone has the numbers this nomination fight continues on," he said."The race goes on," he added.

Hillary Clinton is becoming the political version of the Black Knight from Monty Python & the Holy Grail. The Black Knight had all is limbs severed by King Arthur and discounted his injuries as "just a flesh wound". Arthur victoriously walked away, as the Black Knight called him a coward. Hillary will never have enough delegates to become the nominee. That doesn't stop her from snatching defeat from the arms of defeat.

Update: Former Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn is urging Hillary to fight on for the nomination. Penn has jumped the shark long ago in credibility. Which is one of the reasons he was forced to resign. This nugget about Barack Obama's early victories is my favorite Penn moment.

“Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee would win because every nominee wins Democratic primaries.”

Penn's argument was Hillary would be the better general election candidate. Pay no attention to the candidate that is defeating her. It's hard to argue with logic against illogical bullshit.

Harold Ickes on Super Delegates

The Clinton campaign spin just gets sillier by the moment. Mark Penn argued that Clinton losing more states to Barack Obama makes her the stronger general election candidate. Harold Ickes states that Obama's victories in red states makes him weaker in the general election. Hillary won big in blue states so she should be the nominee. Reality-based Republicans do not believe that John McCain is going to beat the Democratic nominee in Califoria. The last two Democratic Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, did well in the South. Obama's southern victories are exactly what Democrats need in a nominee.

Ickes goes one better and says that the super delegates should vote for Hillary, even if Obama receives more delegates.

''Automatic delegates are supposed to make their best judgment about who would be a good and hopefully a great president, and more importantly, who would win in November,'' he told reporters in a telephone call, pointing to Clinton's wider appeal among Hispanic voters and her victories in some swing states. Independent voters and traditionally Republican states who have favored Obama, he said, can't be counted on in November.

Fortunately, Nancy Pelosi is the voice of reason.

While Ickes emphasized that hundreds of the superdelegates are elected officials, some Democratic leaders say allowing them to break the deadlock would hurt the party's image. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week: ``It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.''

Pelosi also said states that broke the rules, namely Florida and Michigan, shouldn't settle the nomination.

Ickes is right. The super delegates can vote for the candidate of their choice. I always hated the Democratic Party using superdelegates to nominate a candidate. Hopefully, the controversy will end the practice. That doesn't mean that it would break party rules if the super delegates went with the candidate with less delegates.

It is amusing to listen to the twisted logic the Clinton campaign is using. They are saying we can't beat Obama or win red states, but please give us the nomination. The campaign that was telling the press they were unstoppable is now weak.

If Hillary fights for the nomination at the convention, trashing Obama and then loses to John McCain; she will be outcast from the Democratic Party. Blacks and progressives will feel Hillary stole the nomination. Even feminists will stop defending Hillary. She is setting herself up to be the Democratic version of Bush in 2000.

Hillary's scorched earth tactics are what makes her a polarizing figure. I lived through the Karl Rove/George W. Bush era. I don't have the stomach for another President that will mudsling her way into power.

Quote of the Day

“Winning Democratic primaries is not a qualification or a sign of who can win the general election. If it were, every nominee would win because every nominee wins Democratic primaries.”

Mark Penn, political advisor for Hillary Clinton.

My head is spinning from the spin.