{"id":14584,"date":"2008-02-14T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14584.html"},"modified":"2008-02-14T12:55:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T17:55:00","slug":"mark-penn-identifies-significant-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mark-penn-identifies-significant-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Penn identifies ‘significant’ states"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll occasionally wonder if the hostility many Democrats have for Clinton strategist\/pollster Mark Penn is excessive, right up until he gives another on-the-record interview and reminds me how he ended up with his reputation.<\/p>\n

As I’ve mentioned<\/a> before, the problem is hardly ever with what Hillary Clinton herself says. She’s sharp, on-message, and disciplined, rarely making the kind of verbal gaffe that hurts her campaign. It’s her surrogates<\/i> that are the problem.<\/p>\n

Here’s Penn, for example, drawing a distinction<\/a> between states Clinton has won and those Barack Obama has won.<\/p>\n

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, apparently, wasn’t just a random comment made by accident. Penn is reportedly urging<\/a> superdelegates to consider the “quality of where the win comes from” when weighing which candidate to support.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t raise “serious questions” about Obama; it raises “serious questions” about Penn’s judgment.
\n
\nWhat’s the overall tally now? 23 contests to 11, in Obama’s favor? It seems to me, the persuasive Clinton spin is that this isn’t really a state-by-state contest, but rather, a delegate hunt. Individual victories are largely symbolic, given that the candidate who comes in second is still going to pick up delegates.<\/p>\n

But that’s not Penn’s argument at all — he prefers to make the case that Obama isn’t winning “significant” states. Clinton has won 11 contests, but they’re more impressive, the argument goes, because she’s winning important<\/i> states, unlike those Obama victories, which, to borrow Penn’s word, lack “quality” (because they’re caucuses, or “red” states, or have a lot of African Americans, etc.).<\/p>\n

As Atrios responded<\/a>, “I recognize that it’s spin. But it’s really bad spin! And they’re highly paid professional spinners! It’s their job to come up with better spin!”<\/p>\n

The truth is, Penn’s argument isn’t just rhetorically foolish, I suspect it’s substantively wrong, too. Penn is arguing that there are “serious questions” about Obama because he hasn’t won “significant” contests against Clinton. Presumably, the “serious questions” have to do with his viability as a general-election candidate.<\/p>\n

But this isn’t especially persuasive. Clinton won “significant” states like New York, Massachusetts, and California. And while all of those victories were certainly impressive, is it Penn’s contention that Obama would lose all of them as the Democratic nominee? That Obama is such a poor general-election candidate that he’d lose some of the bluest states in the Union?<\/p>\n

If anything, I think Penn’s analysis has it backwards. The question isn’t whether Obama could pick up states in November that Clinton won; the more salient question is whether Clinton could pick up states that Obama won.<\/p>\n

The fewer on-the-record interviews Penn gives, the better it will be for the Clinton campaign. He’s really not helping at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll occasionally wonder if the hostility many Democrats have for Clinton strategist\/pollster Mark Penn is excessive, right up until he gives another on-the-record interview and reminds me how he ended up with his reputation. As I’ve mentioned before, the problem is hardly ever with what Hillary Clinton herself says. She’s sharp, on-message, and disciplined, rarely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}