Hillary Pollster Mark Penn's Firm Tests Negative Messages On Obama And Edwards -- Including On $400 HaircutWEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 2007
Ok, assuming anyone is interested, here it goes. This comes from me by the way, Cliff Schecter, not cliffschecter.com. I have been accused of shilling for virtually every candidate so far, so why not share my thoughts.
First of all, I am on nobody's payroll. You got that trolls who like to send me J'accuse emails? I consult for Working America and have accepted a position at Brave New Films. You will find that neither has endorsed a candidate (or if they have, they haven't told me).
<...>
Finally, there is the rest of the field. Let me get to the elephant in the room. Hillary Clinton. Here is my problem. I worked for Mark Penn during her husband's reelection in 1996, and quite simply find him to be one of the most detestable human beings I have ever met.
I could go into personal gossipy stuff about how he treated people, but why bother? Suffice it to say he's a scumbag with a capital SCUM. He is the anal leakage his client Olestra caused.
He will hurt our party, much like his old friend Dick Morris did, if he has the President's ear. He has run a union-busting outfit. Toiled for Big Oil. Worked with neo-Fascist Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, and advised Mike Bloomberg to switch parties and run as a Republican for Mayor of New York. He has advised Joe Lieberman. I could go on, but just read
Ari's piece and you'll get the important stuff. Oh and
there is this:
Lots of people are understandably curious to know what sort of messages Hillary pollster Mark Penn is testing on behalf of her boss right now. Well, we've got some answers to that question.
Penn's pollsters have been testing various negative messages on both Barack Obama and John Edwards. The messages tested on Obama were that he's inexperienced and that he's voted to fund the war at certain junctures.
A bit more surprising: Penn's firm polled on Edwards' $400 haircut, a line of inquiry that would seem more likely to come from a GOPer than from a fellow Dem's campaign. Penn has already created controversy for Hillary with his anti-union corporate clientele.
So Penn wants to reinforce right-wing attacks on our candidates. Wonderful. So here it is. Not only can I not support Senator Clinton in the primary while this man is by her side, I frankly will have a hard time pulling the lever for her against a Republican. And I live in Ohio.
Hopefully, that makes where I stand clear. Who I support could change (which by the way, might include Senator Clinton if she would dump that anachronistic, 90s ass, as Al Gore did in 2000). But for now it's Edwards and Dodd leading the charge. That is assuming Gore and Wes Clark don't get in, which would make me rethink things.
From
The Carpetbagger Report:
What the poll tells us is where the Clinton campaign is prepared to go, if necessary. The senator has been consistent about not going negative on her campaign rivals, which is good. But she’s also polling about John Edwards’ expensive haircut, which is not good.
Put it this way: why test a message about Edwards’ haircut in the first place? The results will show whether voters actually care about the issue, but so what? This isn’t a road that Democratic candidates should be prepared to go down anyway, so there’s no reason to even put the poll question in the field.
Realistically, are Edwards and Obama message-testing through polling? Probably. Are they measuring responses on anti-Clinton criticisms? Probably. Is all of this just a necessarily evil of modern presidential campaigning in a competitive primary? Sure.
But a) Clinton has derided this style of politicking; and b) she got caught.
How can you tell that this is an embarrassment for the Clinton campaign? Some of the best communications/media professionals in the Democratic Party work for this campaign, and for 24 hours, they’ve had no comment on this story. Sometimes silence says quite a bit.