Marking Mark Penn

Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and campaign adviser is a pollster by the name of Mark Penn, author of the book, Microtrends. John Edwards likened him to Karl Rove. http://abcnews.go.com/...

So who, exactly, is this fellow? Is he a living symbol of Clintonian triangulation? It appears so.

I'm not diarying anything that isn't well-known to kossacks, but I thought it would be instructive to those not familiar with his backgroud and would also serve as a reminder to those who are wavering.

From Wikipedia:

In mid-2007, the dual role of Mark Penn as the CEO of Burson-Marsteller and chief strategist for Hillary Clinton irked some labor leaders. Labor leaders wrote to Clinton expressing their concern about Burson-Marsteller's anti-labor work.

His televised gaffes have, at this point, become legendary and may have helped to sink his candidate's foundering campaign. Appearing on Hardball, he claimed that Sen. Clinton's staff was not making an issue of Obama's past drug use and to make this point, he peppered the word 'cocaine' throughout his denial. This device did not go unremarked by pundits and viewers. Too clever by half? How about too ham-handed to the nth degree.

Penn has often come under fire for his company's clients, whose goals are often at odds with liberal politics. Burson has also represented oil and tobacco companies, and worked for corporations to impede union organizing events, about which labor leaders expressed "distress" in a letter to Clinton.

http://abcnews.go.com/...

Gore, who appears to have better judgement than Sen. Clinton, did not trust Penn and fired him during his presidential campaign. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Asked repeatedly by antiwar Democrats to apologize for her original support for the war, Clinton has refused. Penn has been among her strongest backers on that score...

Then, of course, there are those shooting-oneself-in-the-foot remarks Penn made about certain states being 'insignificant'--an observation guaranteed to piss off voters.

The fact that Sen. Clinton has not fired Mark Penn--a man whose management has proved ineffective and who has ties to the corporatocracy--is enough to make me question her judgement and to keep me from voting for her in the primary.