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Ear to the Ground

Mark Penn on Where Clinton Went Wrong

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Posted on Jun 8, 2008

Mark Penn has taken no shortage of blame for the downfall of Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations, but the former campaign chief has a few ideas of his own about what could have been. Penn writes in the New York Times that Team Clinton should have taken on Barack Obama from the beginning and should have courted young voters and women more aggressively, but money “may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.”

(via Mark Halperin)


Mark Penn in the New York Times:

Are there a lot of other things the campaign could have done differently? Of course. We should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly and much earlier, and we needed a different kind of operation to win caucuses and to retain the support of superdelegates. From more aggressively courting young people earlier to mobilizing the full power of women, there are things that could have been done differently.

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.

And sometimes your opponent just runs a good campaign.

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By JB in NYC, June 10, 2008 at 6:05 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

“We should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly and much earlier…”

Yes, Mr. Penn, you should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly.

Instead, you maliciously launched an indirect, Rove-inspired, whisper campaign attempting to smear your Democratic opponenent by vastly exxagerating his acknowledged experimentation with cocaine in high school and planting rumors throughout the media about him possibly being an inner-city drug dealer.

How much did Hillary pay for your disgraceful advice?

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Outraged's avatar

By Outraged, June 9, 2008 at 11:30 pm Link to this comment

Mark Penn is obviously directing the attention to Clinton’s campaign instead of his own misdeeds abroad. Of course he had a comment about “the campaign” but I’m curious as to his perspective of the practice of selling the souls of the citizenry of a foreign country to soften the cushion upon which his traitorous backside resides.

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By Thomas Billis, June 9, 2008 at 12:17 pm Link to this comment

Leefeller is on right track.It was her positions that did her in.The vote on the War,the vote for the Bankruptcy bill,the vote to label a part of Itran’s armed forces a terrorist group and on and on.Hillary lost it by running a general campaign before she had the democratic nomination.Hillary it was you who lost it.By the way if she were a man she would have had no chance at the democratic nomination Ms Ferraro.

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By felicity, June 9, 2008 at 10:11 am Link to this comment

Apparently Iowans aren’t that fond of doughnuts. The Clinton campaign spent $46,000 in Iowa on the lethal little suckers - and to no avail obviously.  Pundits suggest that the Iowa campaign was a harbinger of things to come, only the first in a series of bad moves, wrong-headedness, flawed policies and just in general screw-ups.

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By Louise, June 9, 2008 at 9:38 am Link to this comment

Leefeller:

“It couldn’t have been the war stupid!  Everyone was impressed with the kitchen sink and the guest room toilet and how about the gathering of bigots?”

~~~

Oh well said! smile

How dumb does dumb have to be before dumb understands dumb?

Don’t know, and I’ll bet Hillary and company haven’t figured it out yet either. But in case they actually want to try, here’s a clue:

WAR

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By Blackspeare, June 9, 2008 at 7:56 am Link to this comment

HRC failed to achieve her goal because she surrounded herself in an envelope of experience when she should have put on the mantle of change as had BHO.  It was that simple.  It is and was pretty well known in political circles that any Democrat is a shoe-in for the presidency.  With the economy tanking and gas prices nearing $5/gal by November, a regime change is in order!

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By Thomas Mc, June 9, 2008 at 7:41 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I think TIME put it best. She lost because she ran as a stereotypical man, when the country was ready for a stereotypical woman.

She spent her career in the Senate proving she has more testosterone than any man, ready to nuke any country that even looks crooked at her… then along comes Obama, preaching the feminine message of peace, hope, and reconciliation.

The Democrats made the right choice.

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By Leefeller, June 9, 2008 at 6:07 am Link to this comment

It couldn’t have been the war stupid!  Everyone was impressed with the kitchen sink and the guest room toilet and how about the gathering of bigots?

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By jackpine savage, June 9, 2008 at 2:45 am Link to this comment

So if you had $100M in 2007 and were already short of cash by early (very early) 2008 what does that say?

I think that it says you’re an idiot, especially if you blew a fair percentage of that $100M on hiring idiots like Mark Penn.  You know, the type of guy who says that you don’t really need an organization in those smaller caucus states because they don’t really matter…and the money spent there could be better spent on his salary.

campaigns are equally about money and organization...and we wasted our money and didn’t have any organization.  But don’t look at me, i would only have been in charge if we won.

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