A mere six months ago, it seemed a good bet that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic presidential nomination. It didn’t turn out that way. The Op-Ed page asked 13 political experts to explain why they thought her campaign didn’t live up to expectations.
And the first one on the list is Mark Penn.
The Problem Wasn’t the Message — It Was the Money
By MARK PENN...The conventional criticisms of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign are these: she had no message; she ran just on experience; she should have shown more of her warmer side; she was too negative; President Clinton’s campaigning hurt her; and she presented herself as inevitable. It is amazing she got any votes at all.
The conventional criticisms...what does that mean? It means the criticisms we are willing to entertain, I guess.
Penn doesn't discuss the racialist campaign tactics that blew up in the campaign's face. Just doesn't discuss it. That is actually an example of why he thought Hillary would get away with it. He seems to have believed no one would have the cojones to just say what they were doing.
His expectations were built on years of experience with corporate media. But it's really a new day, and this is not a New Media Mastery/Blog Triumphalism thing other than that it's forced interactivity on ALL the media. The people who were successfully targeted by his rhetoric not only affirmed the implied message but took the next step in the comments of websites belonging to radio stations, national television networks and newpapers as well as the blogs. It made the buried meanings obvious...in writing...and so broadly disseminated it could not be ignored. It was like a protest march at every major media outlet in the country, honed by discussions on blogs.
"Pig" didn't expect that. Still...were the racialist tactics an error? I don't think so. I think a lot of anti-Obama Democrats, the racially resentful, would have stayed home rather than voting had the Clinton campaign not made it clear she was their champion. I think it did exactly what the campaign intended.
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