Penn Speaks "Why She Lost"

[kpete]

June 12, 2008
Penn Speaks
Posted by TOM BEVAN



Why She Lost
Hillary's message man, Mark Penn, gives us the exclusive postmortem…and still wonders where all the money went

By Lisa DePaulo


How did you underestimate him?

I think I never underestimated it, that once you had that kind of candidate, that that kind of candidate could be real trouble. And that if that candidate... You know, if Obama won Iowa, it would really change, dramatically change, the situation going forward. And consequently, I really wanted to question Obama as early as possible.

So what happened?

Well, first, a lot of good things happened.

Like?

I think that Hillary was a great candidate. We started out in Iowa tremendously well -

Did you just say "tremendously well"?

We had a great start in Iowa. The first town halls she gave, people were amazed. We opened up with that video on the Web - 500,000 people came. She wound up raising what would have been a record amount of money. I think you look through this race in terms of, from when it began, the first phases of this - through October, I think - could not have gone better. What happened was that there was a second extremely well-funded media-beloved candidate who entered the race at about the same time, who then had equal resources and, you know, an attraction, and received unbridled glowing coverage.

You wanted to hit him harder?

Well, I wanted to question the basic underpinning of his campaign.

Which was?

His problems in his campaign were (1) that he didn't have the usual experience of somebody running for president, and (2) that the positions he took on Iraq - you know, that were revered by the press - didn't really hold up when you look through his record in the Senate.

Why didn't you?

Well, I started down that road... President Clinton took on the Iraq back-and-forth. But the rest of the campaign didn't want to tackle Iraq. They always felt that that was a losing proposition for her, and they always pulled it back.

http://men.style.com/gq/blogs/gqeditors/2008/06/why-she-lost.html

[The Magistrate]

1. Mr. Penn, Ma'am, Messed Up Badly: He Will Say Anything To Avoid Saying That....

[Binka]

2. Shut Yer Pie Hole Mark

Penn is a slob. Period.

[yourguide]

3. I am convinced that Mark Penn is why HRC is not the nominee

and it certainly looks like he didnt put any of the blame on himself.

[hisownpetard]

5. He is as off the mark as David Axelrod is on.

Not only should he give Hillary a refund, but he should pay her interest.

[SoonerPride]

14. He had a basic failure to even know the delegate allocation process.

He thought it was "winner take all" and that lead to them believing it would over on 2/5.

He was vastly overpaid for his job performance.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

15. Losers like Penn never do.

[hisownpetard]

4. Hey, Mark - your pitiful faux-rationalizations are as messed up as your "hair"

and not half as funny.

[Cha]

6. That sounds like a lot of gibberish..

and they paid him how much?

[rocktivity]

7. Rocknation Speaks: She Lost Because She Hired Penn

:boring:
rocknation

[antigop]

11. BINGO! And she kept him...he should have been fired n/t

[Barack_America]

8. So it was Bill & Penn versus the rest of the campaign?

That is a very interesting revelation.

[WeDidIt]

9. Every word Penn Spewed in the Interview Summed up in THREE

I Fucked Up.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

10. stupid AND arrogant, Mark---what's not to like? She lost because, once more ...

The Times, They Are A-changin' ...

[PoliticalAmazon]

12. Mark Penn: Karl-Rove wannabe. .....

What is really pathetic is that Penn has all the dishonesty, lack of ethics, slime-oriented tactics of Rove but without the success rate and abilities of Rove.

It's like having a stupid Darth Vader. Lots of random damage done but with little results.

[snooper2]

13. Wow....Everyone should read the whole thing...

:puke:


Look at this crap...

So it was you and the president against the rest of the campaign?

Me and the president thought, Take him on, take him on early. You know, bring out the fact that he gave these interviews saying that his views now were about the same as Bush and that his votes were the same as Hillary’s. And you know, therefore, take away a lot of the myth that’s brought up about his Iraq position. If you were to go through all of the strategy memos and all the preparations, it was always about, “What’s the difference between us and Obama? How can we illustrate that? How can we make that clearer?”

[iconicgnom]

16. Penn's biggest problem is he has no clue where he went wrong in directing HRC's campaign

The short excerpt above proves that he's still clueless.

Notwithstanding the fact that HRC choosing and continuing with Penn showed critical lack of good judgement re. a key leadership factor, if she HADN'T, or if she rid her campaign of his wrongheaded influence and instead had proceeded to campaign strictly on her own merits (rather than focusing on negatives directed toward bringing down her major Dem opponent) I think it'd be a tossup which of them would've won and the primary would now be going on to Denver on a positive note.

But that didn't happen and Penn is old news.

[dailykoff]

17. Sounds like the problem was Iraq, not Penn.

Spin right or spin left, you can't spin away a shitty record.