He is no longer a “Senior Strategist for the Clinton Campaign“.
Took them long enough to dump that incompetent jerk. The man has been a complete disaster.
The bad news is that he appears to still have a role in the campaign, albeit a diminished one.
This guy should have been given the boot long ago. He’s incompetent and expensive, and his continued presence on the campaign does not reflect well on either Bill or Hillary, both of whom stuck with him almost a year longer than they should have.
When he says:
And finally, new rule: If voting can destroy the Democratic Party, then the party isn’t very democratic. Democrats need to stop freaking out about how this long primary battle between two popular candidates needs to be “settled yesterday! Because the candidates are bloodying each other! They’re causing irreparable harm! Mommy and Daddy are fighting!” Hey you people need to reach into your teenager’s knapsack and pull out a Paxil or Prozac and chill out.
It appears that while Hillary Clinton was condemning the Columbia free trade pact, mark pen, in his capacity as CEO of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, was having meetings with representatives of the Columbian government in order to lobby for the agreement.
Penn subsequently apologized for this, but the Change to Win union alliance is now demanding that Penn be fired by the Clinton campaign:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 4, 2008CONTACT: Greg Denier
Noreen Nielsen
(202) 721-0660WASHINGTON, DC – The following is a statement from Change to Win executive director Greg Tarpinian concerning the latest revelation that Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist Mark Penn met Monday with Colombia’s ambassador regarding the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
“It’s time for Senator Hillary Clinton to send her vaunted ‘chief strategist’ Mark Penn packing — back to his job consulting for union busting corporations and anti-labor governments for good.
“We have questioned Penn’s role in the Clinton campaign in the past for his representation of union busting employers like Cintas. At that time, Penn said there was a wall between him and his firm’s representation of union busters. The latest revelation that Penn — whose firm represents the Colombian government in its effort to secure passage of a so-called free trade agreement — is actively involved in securing its passage in the middle of Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign is outrageous. It also suggests that he has been playing a double role – advising the Senator on what to say to curry Democratic voters and advising the Colombian government on what to say to curry a majority of votes in Congress.
“The vast majority of Americans do not believe that we should be granting preferential trade status to a government that coddles death squads that target union organizers. Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for union members, where more than 2,200 workers have been murdered since the 1980s by Colombian death squads for trying to form unions while the government has done nothing to effectively stop the murders. It is time for Penn to go.”
A postscript to all this is that Columbia has now fired Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, saying that, “The Colombian government considers this a lack of respect to Colombians, and finds this response unacceptable.”
Bummer of a birth mark, Hal.
Obama is now saying that he wants to put Al Gore in his cabinet.
Sorry, gotta call serious Chapstik® moment. I know that candidates have to kiss the electorate’s butt, that is, after all a core value of democracy, but this one is kind of blatant.
Not a good move, particularly when it’s clear for the people who really care about such things, Albert Gore will not take the job.
If you offered him the presidency though…………
I was reading an article discussing what it would take for Hillary Clinton to quit the race, and we had an interesting insight into how Barack Obama blew a possible Edwards endorsement:
In the days after John Edwards’s withdrawal from the Democratic race, the political world expected his endorsement of Barack Obama would be forthcoming tout de suite. The neo-populist and the hopemonger had spent months tag-teaming Hillary Clinton, pillorying her as a creature of the status quo, not a champion of the kind of “big change” they both deem essential. So appalled was Edwards at Clinton’s gaudy corporatism—her defense of the role of lobbyists, her suckling at the teats of the pharmaceutical and defense industries—that he’d essentially called her corrupt. And then, not least, there were the sentiments of his wife. “Elizabeth hasn’t always been crazy about Mrs. Clinton” is how an Edwards insider puts it; a less delicate member of HRC’s circle says, “Elizabeth hates her guts.”
But now two months have passed since Edwards dropped out—tempus fugit!—and still no endorsement. Why? According to a Democratic strategist unaligned with any campaign but with knowledge of the situation gleaned from all three camps, the answer is simple: Obama blew it. Speaking to Edwards on the day he exited the race, Obama came across as glib and aloof. His response to Edwards’s imprecations that he make poverty a central part of his agenda was shallow, perfunctory, pat. Clinton, by contrast, engaged Edwards in a lengthy policy discussion. Her affect was solicitous and respectful. When Clinton met Edwards face-to-face in North Carolina ten days later, her approach continued to impress; she even made headway with Elizabeth. Whereas in his Edwards sit-down, Obama dug himself in deeper, getting into a fight with Elizabeth about health care, insisting that his plan is universal (a position she considers a crock), high-handedly criticizing Clinton’s plan (and by extension Edwards’s) for its insurance mandate.
I will say that this plays into the worst perceptions of Obama, as someone who is far too fond of himself and far too confident in his charm to get people to do what he wants.
You have to be an egotist in order to run a real campaign for President, but the thing that has always disturbed me about Obama is the sense that he thinks that he is so personally awesome, and when he threw gays under the bus in South Carolina, I was wondering who is next.
At this point, I think that it is every major Democratic constituency, because he wants to show that he can reach across the aisle.
While campaigning in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama bowled a game.
His score was 37.
I have bowled perhaps 6 times in my life. I think that my best score ever was about 103. I really suck at bowling.
That being said, I could not be drunk enough to bowl a 37.
Jeebus.
I honestly think that she really believes, and this is what is leaking out from her advisers, that Barack Obama is dead meat on the table in November.
I disagree, it does explain what she said in this interview.
I’ve always said that no one in their right mind would vote for the sick old man, but “no one in their right mind” constitutes only something like 30% of the electorate.
Waiting for a similar statement from Obama, who was the first one to say that his supporters would not vote for Hillary in the general.
It appears that Barack Obama has just said that if Reverend Wright had not retired, he would have left the church.
Stupid move. Barack Obama just bitch slapped himself in an effort to separate himself from the man who married him and baptized his daughters.
This is wrong, we can disagree with people we love, and it’s stupid, because it plays right into Josh Marshall’s Bitch Slap Theory of Politics, where by not defending themselves, and in this case people who are near family, they make voters wonder if they will stand up for them.
This is stupid. It makes him look weak, and folks that he is reaching out to will never vote for a black man.
Well, it appears that the investigation of the Harper government’s leak of conversations between Austan Goolsbee and the Canadian Ambassador will be made public.
It probably won’t be pretty for Harper and his cronies.
Could a Canuck out there explain why the opposition is not trying for a no-confidence vote?
He’s saying that, “leavint the door open“, but that really means that he doesn’t know what to do.
Not surprising, since his number one and two economic buddies are Alan Greenspan, whom McCain once famously said that if he died, he put sun glasses on him and do the Weekend and Bernie’s thing, and Phil Gramm, who spent his career making wall street safe for scam artists.
They are numbers one and two on the “who f%&$ed Wall Street up” hit parade.
Courtesy of that communist rag, the Financial times of London, where they ask Why we should fear a McCain presidency?
It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.
Emphasis mine.
Of course, this quote is no where near as disturbing as Harold Meyerson’s in the Washington Post:
It is 3 a.m., and the stillness of the White House night is shattered by the ringing of the red phone. President John McCain, rousing himself from a deep sleep, turns on the light and picks up the receiver. A U.S. embassy in a Middle Eastern country, he is told, has been blown up, and al-Qaeda is taking credit.
McCain takes a deep breath. “Character counts, my friend,” he says. “Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb Iran.”
There is a rustling of blankets, and, brushing aside Cindy McCain, a concerned Joe Lieberman rises from the bed. “Not Iran, Mr. President,” he says. “They hate al-Qaeda.”
“That’s right,” the president says. “I remember now.” He sighs with relief. “Good thing you’re here every night, Joe.”
But suppose, dear reader, that John McCain becomes president and Joe Lieberman doesn’t bunk with the McCains on a nightly basis. How easily should the rest of us sleep? It’s anything but an academic question after McCain’s bizarre performance in Jordan last week.
As disturbing as the last image is, it’s clear that McCain’s solution to anything short of unstopping a toilet is to launch a military strike.
Military strikes against the DPRK and Iran would be almost certain, and I’d offer even money for shooting between Russia or China and the US.
So we have Jake Tapper of ABC News reporting that a “Democratic Party official, who asked for anonymity”, which could be anyone from Howard Dean to the guy who gets the coffee, saying, “Her securing the nomination is certainly possible – but it will require exercising the ‘Tonya Harding option.'” and then adding “Is that really what we Democrats want?”
While I appreciate Tapper’s skills in parlaying a couple of dates with Monica Lewinski into a heavy duty “reporting” gig, first with Salon, and then with better paying media, he’s a still a wanker.
He spent all of 2000 hating on Al Gore, because he missed a flight because they did not hold the press plane for him.
First, if this were someone senior, say someone of my generation (I’m 45) or older, they would not use this term.
Second, he didn’t use the term “senior”, which he would have used if it were defensible.
Furthermore, notwithstanding the use of the quote by some of the hyperventilating elements of the blogosphere, what we have here is someone, and someone not particularly senior saying what has been the standard line for places like MSNBC for some time: that Hillary Clinton is “destroying the party”.
A lot of people are hyperventilating about a story with no “there” there, which I’m sure tickles Mr. Tapper no end.
Details here.
Well, I thought it was a funny turn of phrase.
So, Hillary Clinton is suggesting that Bush create, “an emergency working group on foreclosures”, staffed by such notables as Robert Rubin, Paul Volker, and ….wait for it….wait for it….wait for it….wait for it….Alan Greenspan.
Alan Greenspan the man who suggested in 2004 that the housing sector was, “in good shape”, we would all be better off if, “lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage”?????
I am completely at a loss for invective.
Josh Marshall has it right when he calls out Evan Bayh for being stupid, when he suggests that electoral votes should count in the super delegates decision.
He does not go far enough though.
All the arguments, whether popular votes, delegates, etc. should be irrelevant to the super delegates decision.
They are a 20% swing vote, and their concerns should be as follows (in order of descending importance):
Now it’s clear that things like delegates, popular vote, and fund raising, etc. are factors in those concerns, but they are not the concerns themselves.
They are the trees, not the forest.
Again Josh Marshall has a good insight
But it seems to me that the real reason the Democratic primary race has gone from heated to vicious (at least among the candidates’ supporters, if not the candidates themselves) is precisely because we’re in this awkward seven week hiatus in which there are no actual elections being held.
There is no weekly reality check for the next few weeks.
One of the questions about John McCain’s hookup with Rightwing Bigot Evangelical pastor John Hagee is just who pursued whom.
Obviously, if McCain pursued Hagee’s endorsement, there is a greater obligation for due diligence.
Well, now have this directly from Hagee’s NY Times Magazine interview:
NYT: As a prominent evangelical pastor based in San Antonio, you were recently catapulted into national controversy when you endorsed Senator John McCain for president. Is it true that McCain actively sought your endorsement?
John Hagee: It’s true that McCain’s campaign sought my endorsement.
Mr. “Straight Talk” doesn’t give a damn. There is no corner he won’t cut, nor any value he won’t turn his back on, in order to be president.
It’s interesting that the people caught browsing Barack Obama’s passport records were all contract employees.
They are not vetted in the way that a government employee is, and I think that they are less legally liable for stuff like this.
If I were Karl Rove, I’d use contract employees to dig stuff up like this.
As I said a few days ago, the issue of whether folks who voted in the Replithug primary could vote is a legitimate one, but it’s Obama who has everything to lose here. For Clinton, any resolution has an upside.
So, the Michigan re-vote plan has died in the state senate, because the Obama people were objecting to the exclusion of Republican voters.
I understand the principal, but on all other levels, it is mind-bogglingly stupid.
I agree with Jeralyn Merritt’s take onObama’s preferred solution, a 50-50 split of delegates. This is explicitly preventing a legitimate vote with a legitimate count. You are in Bush buddy James Baker territory.
The math is bad for Clinton right. It’s very, very bad. If there were a revote in Florida and Michigan, Hillary would need to win by about 20% to improve her position, which is not going to happen absent an Elliot Spitzer type revelation.
By playing hardball on this, Obama is opening the door for a fight in the credentialing committee and a floor fight at the convention.
It’s worse than a sin, it is a mistake.
In Florida, however, things are looking brighter, with a proposal to give ½ the delegates according to the Jan 29 votes, and the remainder according to the nationwide split of votes received.