Move Over Shrum, Penn Is Here By: Mark W Adams

Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's chief pollster and strategist, has taken Bob Shrum's place as the nation's most notoriously worthless Democratic consultant/hack. I can't believe candidates aren't banging down my doors to give them advice, cuz I damn well know I can do better than this guy. Fortunately for Bill and Hill, her loss will be mostly blamed on him and not them.

I sent off these USA/Gallup Poll numbers to Ara earlier, and I would have signed it with a "Holy Crap" emoticon if I knew how to make one.

Did every independent in NH just break for Obama? This is a huge number.
USA Today/Gallup (January 4-6)

Obama 41
Clinton 28
Edwards 19
Richardson 6

Then I saw this...

So Mark Penn writes a post on Saturday saying that the polling out of New Hampshire indicates Obama didn't get the double digit bounce that Kerry did off of Iowa in 2004.

Now I'm not a pollster but I know that a poll that appears on Saturday is probably not going to factor in the full impact of the Iowa race. And in fact it didn't. The latest USAT/Gallup has Obama up by 13 points, and the latest CNN/WMUR has him up by 10 points.

KagroX has Penn's number too at D-Kos. Here's Your Bounce! You flipping idiot. Penn now joins a long line of fat sweaty stupid consultants that have been providing Democrats bad advice for three decades.

Another blogger masquerading as a marsupial (Hi Skippy) picks out the money quote from Kevin Drum at the political animal:

on the other hand, it's not like anyone held a gun to her head and forced hillary to hire mark penn. so overall, let's rule it an assisted suicide.

BooMan echoes my thoughts on this to a point.

I don't dislike Hillary, and if the only consideration was her fitness to be president, I could support her. What I detest is her gang...people like Mark Penn, James Carville, Paul Begala, and Terry McAuliffe. To be perfectly frank, progressive activists scored a great victory when we forced Howard Dean in at the DNC over the objections of Team Clinton and the New Democratic coalition. Nominating Hillary would not only wipe out that victory but annihilate our movement in the corridors of power, where we are shamefully weak as it is.

What he misses, that I would add, is that the same thought process that hired Mark Penn would also be in play appointing Judges and Cabinet officers. As I recall, Hillary didn't give her husband the best counsel when picking the first female Attorney General when they got to the White House. (The names you're looking for are Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood.)

Jane Hamsher has a very good rundown on the Penn Problem, and if I were running for president, Jane would be on the short list of people on the payroll.

While satire, this 23/6 report captures the Microtrends author perfectly:

Manchester NH -- Mark Penn, senior political strategist for the Hillary Clinton campaign, today urged Barack Obama to "come clean" and admit that he has fathered two African American girls. Penn speaking to reporters on the Manchester airport tarmac as he was getting his hair re-slimed, defended raising the issue on the grounds that his candidate is losing and he needed to throw as much shit at the wall as possible in hopes that something will stick. "I'm merely pointing out that the senator has two children", Penn gurgled through layers of gelatinous neck fat, "yes they were born in wedlock, but the fact of the matter is they are not white and it's merely something for rural New Hampshire women over age 65 to consider". Penn added he had no "specific evidence" that Obama had "ever given or sold" the girls drugs. In a related development, long time Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe urged independent Granite State voters to "find something else to do next Tuesday". "For this to be a change election", he said, "we need our kind of turnout".

Of course, I still hold out a little hope that Gallup is overestimating the Obama bounce, and some of that support running away from Hillary is surging towards Edwards. Second place in New Hampshire is a ticket to South Carolina for Johnny E.