Mark Penn tanked Clinton's Campaign - calculated Clinton getting ALL 370 delegates from California

[powergirl]

First, I am an Obama supporter. But this is what happened to the Clinton campaign. This is such an elementary mistake. I would be so PISSED if I was a Clinton supporter. I think campaign organization also shows what type of leader a candidate will be. Obama has campaigned like no other and I look forward to him leading our country like no other! P

"As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified -- and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories."


http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/




:wow: :spray:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Penn's a scapegoat.

Clinton was in charge, it's her fault.

[Adelante]

2. That's it nt

[Mooney]

7. The buck certainly stops at her desk.

The real question is, why did she keep him around? When your CHIEF STRATEGIST doesn't know how delegates are apportioned in the race you're running in, you have hired the wrong guy, and you IMMEDIATELY get rid of him and hire someone else, pronto, to do damage control.

I was never a Hillary Clinton supporter, but I always believed that she was smart as hell and had a mind that was on cutting edge at all times. Her refusal to get rid of Penn really flies in the face of that. This is just a basic logic issue.

[FlyingSquirrel]

20. She should have hired Karl Rove ;-)

I'm sure he'd have been more than happy to win her the nomination... and then quit to work for McCain.

[Cha]

12. Precisely...hilary and bil's fault for hiring

super strategist mark penn in the first place. What were they thinking?

They weren't.

[MH1]

36. Especially since she continued to pay him so much money.

I mean give me a friggin break, if Penn fucked up that bad, why was he still on the campaign?

Doesn't really raise one's confidence in Clinton's leadership and decision-making ability, does it?

[Mooney]

3. That's unbelievable.

If that's true, then it kicks the Clinton campaign into a new stratosphere of incompetence. For them to think she was going to get all of the state's delegates, then they either didn't do the most basic research on the what the rules are (which is likely) or they honestly believed that Hillary Clinton was going to get 100% of the vote.

Either way... wow.

[berni_mccoy]

4. And She's MILLIONS In Debt To Penn. She's Paid him Over $100,000 PER DAY for losing advice

[Skidmore]

13. She hired a Republican operative with a conflict of interest (company also manages McCain's)

and what more can you say about incompetence when it came to financial management of the durned thing. It is good we learned the level of poor decision making and judgement she has instead of swallowing the bit about her being inevitable and running a perfect campaign.

[Mme. Defarge]

31. Plus, he's still around ...

what's up with that?

[powergirl]

32. Yeah, why is he still there?

I would have shit canned him for coming up with that stupid idea in the first place - and maybe before I started campaigning!

[high density]

5. Clinton said yesterday

That if the Democrats used the Republican system, she would be the winner already. The press corps just sat there and lapped it up like the good idiots they are. :eyes:

[DearAbby]

11. If a frog had wings.....

this is totally unbelievable. She is paying this idiot that much money to run her campaign...Shit, Hillary, I could have wrecked your campaign for half what you are paying Penn...:crazy:

[XemaSab]

27. I think it says a lot about her "top-down" style

that if you get one f***up in the chain the whole thing falls apart.

And yeah, I'd f*** up her campaign for a THIRD of what she's paying Penn. :crazy:

[Cha]

14. hilary the incompetent Whiner.

[Kittycat]

17. Maybe She Should consider becoming a republican then.

[Exilednight]

19. I was watching the press conference where she made that staement. My mouth .........

literally hit the floor. If we had used rethugh politics and policy then we'd be rethugs.

[YDogg]

38. Sounds as though she regrets not running as a republican.

:shrug:

[HooptieWagon]

41. yes, her campaign from the beginning

has been about whining about the rules not being favorable to her campaign strategy, rather than adopting a strategy that suits the rules. A very bush-like elitest point of view.

[DS1]

6. Hekuva Jorb!

[cottonseed]

8. Doh!

The entire campaign is at fault. Penn didn't get them 20 million in debt, the entire campaign did. This was Hillary managing the biggest organization she'd ever been tasked with and she failed. Obama is the leader here. I think we all see that.

[Cha]

9. They loved them

some Big States.

[Happyhippychick]

10. Wha---wha---what?????? I don't believe it.

[anigbrowl]

15. Now I'm starting to think that her comment about the TX system 'making grown men cry' was true

But having had first-hand experience of two successful presidential campaigns (Bill in 92 and 96) you'd think she'd have been the ultimate judge of strategy. She has only herself to blame if she hired an idiot.

As I've said repeatedly, can you imagine this guy working in the government? 'You're doing a heck of a job, Markie.' I'm SURE he's the 'brain' behind the gas-tax pander as well.

[kentuck]

16. Yes, that helped but...

Until after Super Tuesday primary, most of Hillary's strategy was about herself. She was the most qualified. She knew Washington. She knew how to work with the system. She had the experience from "day one".

However, when she saw that that message was not working, she changed it to about the people, rather than about herself. She would fight for you. She would make sure the trade treaties were fair for you. She would begin to end this war, which is what you want. It was no longer about Hillary. Ironically, she started to do better. But it appears it was about a day late and several million dollars short?

[Exultant Democracy]

18. I find it hard to believe that this one is true, if it is then LOL!

[dnbmathguy]

21. He confuses correlation with causality

There was a review of his book that talks about how he confuses correlation with causality in interpreting his poll results. This is pretty basic stuff.

[SoCalDem]

22. I live in So Cal, and wondered why she was out here in dec & jan

so much..

Name recognition+early voting = 1/3 to 1/2 of the CA vote safely "in the bank" before NH even happened..and before Iowa on Jan 3, most people did not even know who Obama was

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

CA early voting and the prez contest

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20071124-9999-1n24absentee.html

* Between 25-45% of voters in various California counties vote absentee
* "Sample" ballots for the Feb 5th primary and actual absentee ballots will be mailed on Jan 7th. In-person absentee begins on that day, 29 days before the Feb 5th primary
* This precedes at least five major primaries, and for those really on the ball, they can vote the day before New Hampshire!

[XemaSab]

28. I assumed she was using California as her cash cow

The other states don't understand how hard it is to be a Californian and be taken for granted. :cry:

[SoCalDem]

29. She was doing that too, but by the time we "met" Obama

she had hundreds of thousands of "well she's gonna win anyway" votes in the bank.. That's why he could never overtake her, even though the exit polls showed differently.. mail-ins & early voted don't get exit-polled....and many people voted for edwards & the others, who had all dropped out before then:(

I do not like early or no-explain absentee voting..

[calimary]

43. Yeah, I agree. That's a big complaint of mine, and it's gotten me flamed here

before.

But I still believe that California should go FIRST.

Why?

Because we're the biggest. We have the biggest population, the biggest Congressional delegation, the biggest delegation of electoral votes. Our economy ranks (last I looked) alongside France as eighth - in THE WORLD. We have the largest number of the fastest growing demographic group in the nation - Hispanics.

And mainly because that size means that WE stand to be the most profoundly affected by ANYTHING done or decided in Washington. Because there are more of us, there are more of us to be impacted by WHATEVER happens in Washington. We therefore have the most at stake, we're the most vulnerable, we have the most to lose and/or gain, and we're where they all come begging for money to spend in all the other states that always come before us. I'm glad we moved our primary up, and I'd like to add - we moved it up to as close as we could WITHIN THE RULES, unlike Florida and Michigan. We could have thrown ego around (since we certainly have a lot more of THAT anyway) as I've heard Michiganders and Floridians complain - (just today, a Michigan pol noted on either MSNBC or CNN that "yeah, we broke the rules, but the rules weren't fair"). The rules may not have been fair, sure, but they were also not fair to LOTS of other states, too, INCLUDING CALIFORNIA.

Yes, I get heat for this. Probably will here, too. But it's a big sticking point. With apologies to New Hampshire and Iowa, I have never liked the idea that they get to make my decision for me, and I've voted in FAR too many California primaries where it was nothing but an exercise in futility because the decision had already been made long before we even got our say. I have ALWAYS resented that.

I think California should be FIRST. I still think that. It's a big problem for me and it has been since I first started voting and noticing how OUR votes never seemed to make that much difference, even though everyone sure thought our donations were worth soliciting. Sorry, and I apologize for being assholey about this, 'cause reading it back, I can see where people here will think I sound like a schmuck. Mea culpa. Hopefully you can find a way to forgive me for this one of these days, and I'm being sincere here. But that's how I feel and it PISSES ME OFF EVERY Presidential election cycle. I do still believe this. ARDENTLY.

[BklynChick]

23. how is it possible for them to make such an obvious stupid mistake?

[democrattotheend]

24. They did not expect the primaries to be competitive

I think they viewed them as basically a formality. So they did not bother to learn the rules.

[arewenotdemo]

45. Yep. A formality, preceding the coronation.

"It will be me."

[Arugula Latte]

40. Their hubris, arrogance and sense of entitlement to the nomination blinded them.

Seriously, one reason I was so adamantly against Hillary from the start of the primary was I was so incredibly turned off by her presumption. She just OOZED contempt for anyone who would DARE question her queenly right to be handed the nomination based on her last name.

[Teaser]

25. goddamn circus clown as a campaign manager

.

[AntiFascist]

26. This explains their failure to understand the math....

fatal errors like this could also doom her presidency to failure, assuming she somehow became president.

[Raine]

30. Good Gawd!!!

:wow:

[billyoc]

33. Penn really is as smart as he looks.

I just want to fucking choke him.

[rainbow4321]

34. Similar story in TX

It was reported here on DU that it was a Clinton supporter who initially helped create the TX 2 step process. It is that same process that led to HRC losing TX (O 99, C 96)..and we ALL know how much she bitched/trashed the 2 step!


Then we had the "HRC campaign didn't understand" the TX 2 step process until a few weeks before TX primary day (WaPo article at the time) and were freaking over it.


Her people were/are cocky idiots who thought her coronation was a given..so why bother learning about each state's election laws.

[Bad Thoughts]

35. What about Ickes?

You mean he couldn't educate the campaign. He went along with the strategy. Isn't he a dumbass, too?

[kwenu]

37. Proves she wasn't right to be President. The campaign was HORRIBLE.

Go away Hillary. You've lost.

[Arugula Latte]

39. "Math is hard."

Who can understand things like fractions?


:rofl:

[Carrieyazel]

42. Hillary made the worst call herself. Going full-bore in Iowa and wasting $23 million.

She wasn't going to win there. They said that caucuses were not their thing, (and showed it by not competing in most of the other caucus states) but went all-out in Iowa, buying the conventional wisdom that she had to have the very first race. Should have put in all in New Hampshire and ignored Iowa, but she would not do it.

[Pisces]

44. Hillary was the boss, she hired him and still has him on payroll. She is the one to blame