HRC has run a textbook DLC campaign – center-right messaging to gain the nomination of her center-left party

and maybe she's goin' down... that would be just hunky-dory with me... i've gone from a mere distaste for hrc to a solid loathing as she has revealed more and more of her true colors... i suppose it's good news that, this early in the campaign, people are getting a clue...

In polls that coursed through the professional community of political consultants in Washington last week, it now appears that Senator Clinton’s presidential candidacy may be buckling under the weight of the burden of messaging against her base.

[...]

There is no doubt that Senator Clinton’s top campaign staff believe they are now out of control of their presidential campaign which has assumed a new and unwanted dynamic. Now some of Senator Clinton’s top staff believe that they are in a dangerous and potentially lethal tailspin.

[...]

Last week, the Clinton campaign made the conscious decision to go ‘negative.’ In this particular case, this is a last ditch attempt to hold her faltering candidacy together. If their desperate measure is not successful, Senator Hillary Clinton’s bold attempt to become the first woman president of the United States of America will collapse.

[...]

At this point in the arc of history, the American public is fed up with the excesses of Republican neoconservativism led by Cheney, Bush, Bolton, Ledeen, Abrams, Pipes, Hadley, Libby and Rice and its stealth faction in the DLC led by Senator Clinton and her husband aided by their merry band of neocons clustered around Al From, Howard Wolfson, Stanley Greenberg and James Carville, all of whom supported the ill-fated wars of the Bush Era. In 2002, encouraged by her husband and their minions in the DLC, Senator Clinton led the charge against Iraq, and she has been at the forefront of the pack calling for another surge of jingoistic bellicosity against Iran.

michael carmichael, the author of this post on global research, and occasional blogger on his own site, planetary movement, i believe, hits the nail on the head... the american public is indeed increasingly fed up, altho' not to the extent i believe they SHOULD be... it's not just the excesses of neoconservatism and its enablers in the dlc that is behind our rapid descent into the the second ring of suburbs of a police state...

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Time for a re-post on Mark Penn, HRC's Karl Rove

as hrc seems to be taking a hard turn toward the nasty, now hurling both ridicule and accusation - mostly in obama's direction - i think it's time to repost the item i put up back at the end of this past april that provides a wee bit of detailed background on the man i increasingly think of as hrc's karl rove, mark penn...

from the wapo...

In the four months since Clinton officially became a candidate, [Mark J. Penn] has consolidated his power, according to advisers close to the campaign, taking increasing control of the operation. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate.

If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon (he was part of the team that encouraged Clinton's husband to run on the issue of school uniforms in 1996).

If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council whose clients have included Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).

If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party's biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm, where he personally hones Microsoft's image in Washington.

And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.

markos, atrios, david sirota, and many other bloggers working feverishly for the grassroots/netroots/unwashed masses have cited case after case of the stupendously arrogant, elitist, inside-the-beltway, dlc-anointed, democratic campaign consultants that are so pathetically out of touch with the real democratic/progressive base... today's wapo offers up the quintessential profile of one of those very folks, and then tries to make it look like hillary is passively acquiescent while he calls all the shots... i say bullshit... he's there because she wants him there... the first part of the article talks about how gore fired him from his 2000 campaign for all of the same reasons hillary apparently wants him...

fine, hillary,,, you're the candidate... you're the one that wants to be president... you choose the campaign staff you want... just don't come calling on me to vote for you...

p.s. penn's firm, penn, schoen & burland, is owned by burson-marsteller, and guess who's burson's ceo...? and guess what's featured on burson's home page...?

Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn discusses the Internet's affect on U.S. campaign politics on Council of PR Firms' podcast [mp3]

from penn's burson-marsteller bio...

Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mr. Penn oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mr. Penn focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.

Mr. Penn has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Penn working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

just the kind of guy to be advising hillary about how to relate to the electorate in the 2008 campaign, the most critical presidential election in the history of the united states...

hrc sold her soul a very long time ago... whether mark penn holds the marker is immaterial... she has a person like mark penn working for her because she's that kind of person herself... period...

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How our Democratic leadership is selling us down the river

none of what david sirota says should be surprising to anyone who has paid any attention whatsoever to how liberal and progressive ideals have been systematically betrayed in this country by the leadership of the very party that purports to support them... and, even if you haven't been paying attention, you've probably experienced the effects, and wondered why everything in our economy seems to work against the wage slaves that are toiling away year after year keeping all the machinery of the system running...

there was a very strong message sent in the 2006 elections, a message from the grassroots, from folks like us that nobody in congress or the white house seems to pay any attention to unless they're trying to baffle us with bullshit... watching developments since the new congressional session began in january, i can only conclude that, if the message registered, it certainly hasn't been taken to heart...

sirota highlights what's going on and, more importantly, what ISN'T going on, in three important areas - trade, lobbying and iraq - all three of which were part of the message sent by the 2006 elections...

trade...

[T]he Democratic congressional leadership and less than half of all Democratic lawmakers (as during NAFTA) join with all Republicans to ram a free trade package through Congress over the objections of the progressive movement and rank-and-file Democrats who ran against lobbyist-written trade policies in 2006.

lobbying...

[T]he Democratic congressional leadership would join with all Republicans to ram a sham lobbying "reform" bill through Congress potentially over the objections of many of rank-and-file Democrats and the progressive movement.

iraq...

[T]he Democratic congressional leadership would join with all Republicans to ram a blank check Iraq spending bill through Congress potentially over the objections of many of rank-and-file Democrats and the progressive movement.

and the result...?

Thus, we get Democratic leaders who just months after election to the majority are attempting to triangulate against their own party and the progressive movement. That this strategy helped destroy the progressive agenda, the Democratic Party, and Democrats' electoral prospects for the better part of a decade seems of no concern to the people trying to perform these acrobatics - all they seem to be focused on is bringing a smile to David Broder's face and a truckload of Wall Street cash to their campaign coffers. Whether their triangulation defies political history and brings them electoral success in 2008 is less important than what the actual real-world consequences of such behavior is for the country - and if the current trend continues, those consequences could be severe.

we have no business sitting still for THIS shit any more than we can sit still for bushco's unrelenting assault on our constitution and everything else that serves as the foundation for our republic...

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Dems, now hear this! Go kick some butt!

greg sargent at TPMelectioncentral...

The polls show clearly that the public strongly supports efforts by Dems to confront Bush both on Iraq and on corruption. Check out the numbers in this recent Pew poll:

Do you think Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far or not far enough in challenging George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, or are they handling this about right?

Too far 23%
Not far enough 40%
About right 30%
Don't know/Refused 7%

how very interesting, and particularly appropriate given my previous post about the dems "faltering momentum" and the bullshit being peddled by rahm emanuel and leon panetta... more greg sargent...

[T]he reporters quote Leon Panetta making the case that Dems had better watch out and not be too confrontational with the White House:

"The primary message coming out of the November election was that the American people are sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock, and they want both the president and Congress to start governing the country," warned Leon E. Panetta, a chief of staff in Bill Clinton's White House. "It just seems to me the Democrats, if they fail for whatever reason to get a domestic agenda enacted ... will pay a price."

[T]he choice the public faces isn't between "fighting" and "gridlock" on the one hand, and "bipartisan cooperation" on the other. Rather, it's between (a) accepting the disastrous Bush/GOP status quo; and (b) backing Democratic efforts to change it. And the public supports the latter. Even though those efforts are partisan and confrontational. Is that really so hard to fathom?

let's keep the butt-kicking going strong...!

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The WaPo tells us how it is with the Dems - on page 1

i swear to god, there isn't anything they won't do or say to make the democrats look bad...

Democrats' Momentum Is Stalling
Amid Iraq Debate, Priorities On Domestic Agenda Languish

By Jonathan Weisman and Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 5, 2007; Page A01

In the heady opening weeks of the 110th Congress, the Democrats' domestic agenda appeared to be flying through the Capitol: Homeland security upgrades, a higher minimum wage and student loan interest rate cuts all passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats' agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the "do nothing" tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them.

"We cannot be a one-trick pony," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who helped engineer his party's takeover of Congress as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "People voted for change, but Iraq, the economy and Washington, D.C., [corruption] all tied for first place. We need to do them all."

even worse, there's rahm, aiding and abetting the wapo effort...

sorry, rahm... if getting us the hell out of iraq qualifies as a "one-trick pony," YOU, sir, can bite me... and, i don't know what YOU mean by corruption, but i suspect it isn't what i mean by corruption... i suspect you're talking about folks like delay, abramoff, renzi, and the other gaggle of crooked congressmen and lobbyists... what I'M talking about is the constitution-shredding criminals currently occupying the white house which i would place in a priority ABOVE iraq, and which you don't even bother to mention...

what i have to say to you, wapo, is stop trying to paint the democrats as a bunch of bumblers... they are dealing with the most criminal administration in the history of this country, and, in doing so, are having to face many of their own shortcomings... the good news is that they're keepin' on keepin' on...

and you, rahm, are a sorely out-of-touch, dlc big-mouth, and fall squarely into the category of one of those "shortcomings" i referred to above...

p.s. the dems momentum isn't "stalling..." it's just getting started...

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Mark Penn, the behind-the-scenes, DLC, Washington insider that runs Hillary 2008

read this and then guess yet ANOTHER reason why i wouldn't vote for her...

In the four months since Clinton officially became a candidate, [Mark J. Penn] has consolidated his power, according to advisers close to the campaign, taking increasing control of the operation. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate.

If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon (he was part of the team that encouraged Clinton's husband to run on the issue of school uniforms in 1996).

If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council whose clients have included Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).

If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party's biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm, where he personally hones Microsoft's image in Washington.

And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.

markos, atrios, david sirota, and many other bloggers working feverishly for the grassroots/netroots/unwashed masses have cited case after case of the stupendously arrogant, elitist, inside-the-beltway, dlc-anointed, democratic campaign consultants that are so pathetically out of touch with the real democratic/progressive base... today's wapo offers up the quintessential profile of one of those very folks, and then tries to make it look like hillary is passively acquiescent while he calls all the shots... i say bullshit... he's there because she wants him there... the first part of the article talks about how gore fired him from his 2000 campaign for all of the same reasons hillary apparently wants him...

fine, hillary,,, you're the candidate... you're the one that wants to be president... you choose the campaign staff you want... just don't come calling on me to vote for you...

p.s. penn's firm, penn, schoen & burland, is owned by burson-marsteller, and guess who's burson's ceo...? and guess what's featured on burson's home page...?

Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn discusses the Internet's affect on U.S. campaign politics on Council of PR Firms' podcast [mp3]

from penn's burson-marsteller bio...

Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mr. Penn oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mr. Penn focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.

Mr. Penn has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Penn working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

just the kind of guy to be advising hillary about how to relate to the electorate in the 2008 campaign, the most critical presidential election in the history of the united states...

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