What a tool. Rather than congratulating Obama for winning a great race, fairly and graciously, with more elected delegates from those who voted in primaries and caucuses, Mark Penn, in a New York Times op-ed instead credits the superdelegates for pushing Obama over the top, and blames "low-turnout caucuses" (a talking point throughout Clinton's campaign as being "undemocratic" and "unfair"), blames the media, and blames just about anything and anyone but himself, for the loss.
...as Barack Obama gained enough superdelegates to put him over the top. ... But she went from a lead of 120 superdelegates in early February to a deficit of 40 before last Tuesday.
Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.
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Though the title of the article is "The Problem Wasn’t the Message — It Was the Money", the article barely, and weakly, mentions the financial problems the campaign faced:
Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result
I don't think any other candidate would ever complain that $100m prior to the first primary contest would ever be insufficient fundraising. Granted, it was weak compared to Obama's fundraising machine, the fact is, the Clintons are independently wealthy, and rather than use President Clinton to their fundraising advantage, they used him to run up the margins in the rural areas of the later primaries. Mark: your campaign had every resource advantage going into the the first contest, and you squandered it. Period. Don't blame the money.
While he's at it, Marky Penn takes a shot at the media. Hell, why not, blaming the media was the extent of his campaign's message over the last few months:
I believe nothing they said was ever intended to divide the country by race. Any suggestion to the contrary was perhaps the greatest injustice done to them in this campaign.
Keep blaming the caucuses and superdelegates, Marky...
we needed a different kind of operation to win caucuses and to retain the support of superdelegates.
Don't let the door kick you in the @$$ on the way out Marky, and unless there was any question, your buddy Wolfie and Ickey won't be missed either. I'm glad you guys didn't completely ruin a fine candidate like Senator Clinton, and she'll be able to pick herself up after the wreck of a campaign that you helped run into the ground.
Oh, and you better work on congratulating your opponents a little better, you sore loser:
And sometimes your opponent just runs a good campaign
After blaming everybody but himself, this ain't exactly the most heart-felt congratulations I've heard.
To summarize Penn's reasons for being a sore loser:
- Blame the Money
- Blame the Media
- Blame the Superdelegates
- Blame the Caucuses.
- Don't blame me.