{"id":180027,"date":"2017-08-03T19:34:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T00:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/08\/03\/zuckerberg-hires-former-clinton-pollster-joel-benenson-politico\/"},"modified":"2017-08-03T19:34:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T00:34:00","slug":"zuckerberg-hires-former-clinton-pollster-joel-benenson-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/08\/03\/zuckerberg-hires-former-clinton-pollster-joel-benenson-politico\/","title":{"rendered":"Zuckerberg hires former Clinton pollster Joel Benenson &#8211; POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/jFlZRoH.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/jFlZRoH.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a>My first though upon hearing that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2017\/08\/02\/zuckerberg-hires-former-clinton-pollster-joel-benenson-241265\">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired former Clinton pollster and political advisor Joel Benenson<\/a>, oh my God, this dirt-bag is going to run for President.<\/p>\n<p>My second thought was that I didn&#8217;t have to worry, because if he is going to be relying on the incompetents who managed to lose an election to an inverted traffic cone, then he has a snowball&#8217;s chance in hell of actually winning anything: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have hired Democratic pollster Joel Benenson, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton\u2019s failed 2016 presidential campaign, as a consultant, according to a person familiar with the hire.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Benenson\u2019s company, Benenson Strategy Group, will be conducting research for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple\u2019s philanthropy. The organization \u2014 whose mission statement, according to its website, is \u201cadvancing human potential and promoting equality\u201d \u2014 is endowed with the couple\u2019s Facebook fortune.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Zuckerberg and Chan have vowed to give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares, worth an estimated $45 billion, to charity. Bringing on Benenson is the latest sign that they\u2019re pushing their philanthropic work more heavily into the political and policy world.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In January, the couple hired David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama\u2019s 2008 presidential run, as president of policy and advocacy. Plouffe had previously worked at Uber. Ken Mehlman, who ran President George W. Bush\u2019s 2004 reelection campaign, also sits on the board.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is seriously considering a Presidential run, and he is availing himself of the most incompetent people available, so it&#8217;s going to be a clown show.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, that&#8217;s what they said about Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first though upon hearing that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired former Clinton pollster and political advisor Joel Benenson, oh my God, this dirt-bag is going to run for President. My second thought was that I didn&#8217;t have to worry, because if he is going to be relying on the incompetents who managed to lose &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,450,578,367,405],"class_list":["post-180027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-employment","tag-incompetence","tag-internet","tag-presidential-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}