Now Mark Penn Is Saying Obama Can’t Win the General Election


He said it during a conference call with reporters:

Mark Penn made the comment during a conference call in which the Clinton campaign and two of her supporters — Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter — argued that Obama has sent Pennsylvanians a bad signal by allegedly downplaying the importance of that state’s April 22 primary. They made the case that this memo from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe (which Nutter said the author should be fired for writing), would come back to haunt Obama in the fall if he is the Democratic nominee.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why Plouffe should be fired for writing the memo, because, after reading it, I am at a loss to know what Nutter (aptly named) finds problematic about it.

The USA Today piece includes audio of the telephone conversations.

Jonathan Chait suggests that the Clinton strategy is to make Obama unelectable by saying he’s unelectable, over and over and in every way possible:

As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they’re tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain’s message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton’s decision to continue her campaign. It’s actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he’s unelectable. It’s not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.

John Cole thinks Clinton is a sociopath:

Listen to this interview (via Sully). Hillary Clinton is insane. I don’t know what else to conclude after listening to her state, the Michigan and Florida elections were fair, to state that she never claimed McCain was experienced and Obama was not, to claim she has not hinted that Obama would be her VP. It was like Say Anything, the political edition. Sullivan is right- she is a sociopath. There really is no other way to describe it.

That NPR link actually comes from one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers, who passed it along with this commentary:

If you did not hear Clinton’s interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR this morning, be sure to give a listen. It shattered my Obama optimism.

Inskeep gave her several of the hard questions you write about every day, and she parried every one. She sounded — not was, but sounded — rational, logical, sensible (Obama-like?) in explaining why the MI and FL delegates should be seated, and denying she ever said McCain was more qualified than Obama. Some of her answers were such whoppers that Inskeep actually repeated the questions, his voice rising with incredulity.

The woman is an absolute assassin. Ice water in her veins. A second-generation terminator (yeah, the liquid-metal kind). As a politician, I fear she is light years ahead of Obama, and I am very, very afraid.

After listening to the interview (and actually before that, if I’m honest), I agree.

Did you know that the p.r. firm Mark Penn runs (Burson-Marsteller; he’s CEO) also is advising John McCain in his run for the Republican nomination? Neither did I.

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