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advwomen
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Posted: Mon Apr 7th, 2008 05:06 am |
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So why dump Penn this close to Pennsylvania where so much — dare I say everything — rides on a Clinton victory?
The campaign won’t say anything more than the meeting with the Colombia government was viewed as an unpardonable act of poor judgment (it won’t say betrayal but other Democrats not affiliated with the campaign do). The deeper reason, according to several top Democrats close to the Clinton camp, is that Penn’s continuation with the campaign threatened to disrupt the flow of money and the status of Super Delegates already committed to Hillary or those with whom she is actively negotiating support.
Clinton can’t afford a slow-down in fund-raising. Clinton also can’t stand any Super Delegate defections or to suddenly have dozens of Supers on the “negotiation” line suddenly stop answering their phones or ignoring Hillary’s e-mails. Money and Super Delegates were about to slip away from Hillary if she kept Penn.
His departure, by the way, was not cause for panic, concern, alarm, remorse, regret, sadness, nostalgia, or nausea in Hillaryland. Indeed, those were the reactions to Penn’s continued presence.
“Penn will always be linked to one strategic approach and one strategic approach only for Hillary’s campaign,” said Tony Coelho, former campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000. “And that was inevitability. Penn cast Hillary as inevitable and everything flowed from that. But inevitable became imperial and began to hurt her. And then as the inevitable one, she didn’t compete in caucuses because she wouldn’t need them. If she had competed in those caucuses she would have won some and finished strong in the rest and would be ahead in delegates now. But Penn was all about inevitability. That drove institutional money to Hillary but it also drove grassroots money to Obama.”
... Penn’s departure, while bad for headlines, could be good for the candidate and very good for her over-worked and beleaguered senior staff. If Penn’s detractors are to believed, he had a suffocating effect on Clinton’s team, more probably than she fully realized. It is possible that those in Hillaryland who have smoldered for weeks or months about Penn’s approach to the campaign will find new freedom and new energy and the campaign will find within itself a sense of possibility and renewal.
http://bourbonroom.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/04/06/a-penn-less-pennsylvania-for-clinton/
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