Hillary's camPaign can no longer compete with Obama's. I feel bad for Hillary because she listened to misguided consultants. THEy come from a culture where lying is second nature. They have lied so much that they shot themselves in the foot. I really believe that Hillary's nasty camPaign has left a bad taste in the average person's mouth. It is going to be a tough Pill for Hillary to swallow because she has to come to terms that her campaign beat themselves. INspired by negative attack style, the Clinton campaign has been done in by their own tactics.
FIRST BOSNIA AND NOW PENN. THIS IS EXACTLy HOW WASHINGTON WORKS. HAVE pEOpLE BELIEVE yOU ARE AGAINST a SpECIFIC TRADE AGREEMENT just to get their vote AND THEN change faces and negotiate for the very same agreement you claimed to be against..
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What Was Hillary Thinking?
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Answer: Planet Washington. Only among insiders in Washington would this kind of arrangement be considered even vaguely acceptable. The firm's list of clients—including the notorious Blackwater security company and the government of Colombia—was almost comically "off-message" for a Democratic campaign.
The acid tone permeated the campaign—but, again, that was Clinton's fault. She is the one who set up an unstable and untenable organization chart. It had a literally part-time Penn at its apex and everybody around him in what eventually became a circular firing squad.
John McCain's campaign is larded up with corporate consultants, but at least one of the top ones, Charlie Black, had the good sense to quit his own job at Burson.
Obama and his team are hardly saints. They have their Washington and corporate ties; they have their well-do-do and well-connected media and polling consultants. But it didn't take an industrial-strength "oppo" team to see Penn as a political clay pigeon.
Perhaps it was the money that led to the blindness all around. Hillary's launching pad was the Clinton money crowd of the '90s, and Penn knew—and was generally respected by—all of them. As for Penn, he didn't want to give up his stake in business for the mere task of electing another president. He had already helped to do that with Bill Clinton.
Penn will stay on, in a reduced role as a polltaker—the job he probably should have had to begin with—although why he is remaining at all given his ties to Burson is a mystery.
In retrospect, what Hillary should have done was move her entire campaign out of Washington, maybe to her home town of Chicago. On second thought, somebody else had already claimed that place.
© 2008
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