These memos read like a job application for Penn to get a job working with Rove and/or the RNC.

Basically this explains the Clinton outrage I think. They held fire and were still raked over the coals for running a Republican campaign. Penn wanted to run a Republican campaign.

We should care because these are the exact lines of attack that McCain will use on Obama. Obama supporters act like the election is already in the bag when Obama's actually getting pummeled by McCain's machine.

Does anyone recall even one Obama line of attack that stands out? In contrast, McCain has a strong relationship with the press and he knows how to get his message out there.

While Obama is vacationing in Hawaii, his negative numbers are going up while McCain is looking more electable everyday.

This is the way they should have done it.

http://www.johnmccain.com/involving/petition2.aspx?guid=4160d817-603f-4803-8ef7-d83dee46c731

This is honestly funny stuff. Penn was a boob. Make that is a boob.

Surprise---Mark Penn is piece of garbage.

I'm not sure what's with the rewriting of history that's currently going on. Hillary's campaign did push the "Obama's not electable" narrative. They never said it explicitly, but they frequently talked about how he's "never been vetted"; they said he couldn't win white working-class voters or Hispanic voters (that's where that absurd notion started, and still lingers today, despite evidence to the contrary); they pushed the notion that "only John McCain and I (Hillary) have passed the Commander-in-Chief threshold; Obama just has a speech." Furthermore, I've seen talk about how they rejected pushing the "Obama is not 'American'" meme. They did no such thing. Have people forgotten the pictures they pushed of Obama in African garb? Have they forgotten the fact that some of the original "Obama's a Muslim" smears were being e-mailed right out of Clinton campaign offices, and they had to fire/remove people who were floating that information. Knowing that the "otherness" attack was on the table, it's not so clear that those e-mails were the "mistake" that the Clinton campaign claimed publicly that they were... So, let's keep this real. They pursued a despicable strategy against a fellow Democrat, and worse a fellow American. No rewriting of history will change that.

And Hillary's camp never did any of this crap, correct? Instead of portraying Penn as a villian, why not portray Hillary as level headed?

I'm still disappointed, given the reaction of Obama on the Russia/Georgia crisis, and of course McCain's reaction, that Hillary isn't the nominee. Clearly the most level headed of the three.

On March 19, Hillary Clinton said that what she portrayed as Obama's position on a Michigan revote was "wrong, and frankly un-American."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/clintons-push-for-michigan-re-vote-invokes-civil-rights/

On March 21, Bill Clinton had the more memorable line: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who love this country, and were devoted to the interest of this country . . ."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/21/another-bill-clinton-mome_n_92818.html

The second comment was interpreted in different ways. (The Clintons or other politicians would rarely launch an attack like this that wasn't likely to be.) But I find it interesting that they occurred pretty much back-to-back, as if they might have been testing out the "un-American" line of attack.

OK, if all is what they say, why didn't they look at Edwards...and point out his longcomings...Since Edwards was draining votes from HRC...

what's most amusing about all this "Penn-bashing" is that Obama ran a "brutally negative" campaign while Penn was merely writing memos about it.

Ultimately, what these memos show is that Penn was right, and that Clinton's decision to run a wholly-positive, issues focussed campaign through February was her "downfall".

Ultimately, all this Obamatrom outrage over Penn's "foreign" phrase is going to backfire on The One, because Penn's critique is solid (note that no one disputes the premise of Penn's proposal, i.e. that Obama's emphasis on his "multicultural" background is a positive only with the "elites" and a negative with average Americans).

The more focus that is given to the critique, the more it will become internalized by the American people. In their inability to control their CDS, the Obama Personality Cult is doing the GOP's work for them -- the last thing that Obama needs is for the media to keep discussing his "exotic" background, because middle America isn't "exotic."

From Joshua Green's article:

What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

As it should be. As I said many times during the campaign, if she can't manage her own staff, she'll be a lousy president. She would have been an incredibly lousy president.

Why is the mainsteam media so obsessed by this. THE FACT IS IT WAS A STATEGY MEMO AND WAS NOT USED. Why don't you focus on John McCain and stop focusing on a consultant who was dismissed by HRC. As a HRC supporter but now an Obama backer, GROW UP!!!!!

This all just goes to show what many of us were saying before about why Clinton could never get the vp nod. Even while in public saying all the right things (and barely since Bill still can't bring himself to do so...) their 'surrogates' are still doing all they can to undermine the dem nominee. Think about it, just because they supposedly didn't use this advice while running against him (although they actually did so I don't know folks are claiming they didn't) by releasing it now it makes no difference. The attack is still made and this time it's coming from a supposed Dem. They're doing McCain's work for him! He can either just let the media take it and run with it or more likely take it himself and run with it. Either way, a freaking Dem strategist is creating and putting out attacks on the Dem candidate for the Repubs to use. Pathetic. Talk about your party unity...

You don't see the other Repub candidate's former campaign staff coming out with their attacks from their primary. No, they're all out there attacking Obama for their nominee or shutting the fuck up. Wouldn't it be nice to see the Dems do the same for their nominee?

Unbelievably, there are still some in the party that want Obama to pick Hillary as VP?!?! Are you kidding me?? This is the election for the next POTUS not a pilot for a new soap opera.

Privately it was relayed to me from a personal friend of Barack Obama that he said in retrospect he now knew why Clinton lost the primary fight and it was about their entire culture of the campaign upon bringing in some of their staff.

Like or not the Clinton culture were only by degree better than the Rove GOP culture that has completely emasculated the national political scene. They lack a grounding of conscience, which is one of the big undertow currents running through the American political movement. Penn's memo's show serious even adjunct disregard for political ethos outside of winning at any cost. Clinton's team was by definition self-serving, condescending, personally entitled, and arrogant to a losing degree.

The thing is at least they vetted Obama before the GOP attacks did and basically have made Obama's support immune to the attack.