For a good laugh, read Mark Penn’s latest, hilariously defensive “Ignore the Churchill Lies on the Radio, We Are Winning in Zee East” memo to Clinton supporters here. It is a certain early tell that the more trouble a front-running campaign faces, the more they will find themselves fiercely quoting irrelevant polling data. Penn is reduced to spinning new polls from the late January Florida primary. Florida numbers will indeed be important, but only after Iowa and New Hampshire, not now. Somehow, an update of Iowa caucus polling is missing in Penn’s memo. He tries instead to shame Edwards and Obama for “abandoning the politics of hope” with guttersnipe negative campaigning. Fate is punishing this insolence, Penn argues, as national polls show Obama’s and Edwards’s negatives rising. Hillary alone sits upon her white horse of purity, the campaign’s Joan of Arc. It’s such over-the-top agitprop that even the drunkest editor on the PRAVDA re-write desk back in ’79 would have spiked it out of embarrassment. The Clinton campaign is hitting some bumps. The smart move would be to level with its supporters and work to overcome the challenge, instead of treating them like simpletons.
