Mark Penn, Senator Clinton’s “Chief Campaign Strategist” had a little chat with reporters this morning. Of all the topics he could have picked he chose to discuss this one:
Though the campaign later argued that he hadn’t said it, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief campaign strategist told reporters this morning that Sen. Barack Obama “can’t win the general election.” […]
[Penn] says Obama “really can’t win the general election.” … [H]e also says that “if Barack Obama can’t win” in Pennsylvania, “how could he win the general election?”
Later, a reporter asks what he meant. Clinton campaign communications chief Howard Wolfson jumps in to say that “Mark did not say that.”
Then Penn says that if Obama doesn’t win the Pennsylvania primary, it “raises serious questions” about whether he can win the general election.
Not surprising that Penn might say this since his firm also represents — wait for it — the presumptive Republican nominee, St. John of the Perpetual War McCain. Too bad he was speaking as a prominent member of Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign. You know, Senator Clinton, the Democrat. The Democrat who if she can’t be the Democratic nominee, apparently doesn’t want the Democrats to win the White House.
Why do I say that? Because it’s her campaign. These are her employees. If she didn’t want her campaign to be continually tearing down the ability and electability of her opponent, if she didn’t want to run scary attack ads suggesting he isn’t up to protecting your children at three am in the morning, if she didn’t want to send her surrogates out to make blatantly racist appeals about Senator Obama, she could have chosen not to do so. This is her campaign. She’s in control. She’s the one with all the experience, as she frequently reminds us. So, it is only fair to make the assumption that these attacks on Obama were authorized by her, and she is responsible for them. Indeed some of the attacks, like the one that suggested she and Republican Senator McCain are the only two candidates remaining who have passed the “Commander in Chief threshold” (whatever the hell that meant), came straight from her own lips.
Certainly she hasn’t chosen to reject or renounce these attacks very often, though she did accept Geraldine Ferraro’s bitter and ungracious resignation letter in which no apology was ever offered to Senator Obama for Ferraro’s grossly offensive remarks. This came a day after her campaign manager chose to blame Senator Obama for inserting race into the campaign because he defended himself against the suggestion by Ferraro that the only reason he’s still in this campaign is because he’s a black man, as if “affirmative action” somehow applies to Presidential politics.
It’s a very, ugly, nasty, sleazy road Senator Clinton has chosen to take her campaign down, a road in which nothing apparently is out of bounds. I have a question for you Senator Clinton: Even if somehow you manage to win the nomination in Denver by hook or by crook, what will you have won? Your party will be divided, and many stalwart supporters of the party in the past will not turn out to vote for you in November. You will have painted yourself as a rank opportunist who will say and do anything to win. And you will have given Senator McCain the greatest gift any Republican can have by allowing him to frame the campaign in terms that are the most favorable to Republicans.
It has been suggested that you fully recognize that, absent a Spitzer-type sex scandal involving Senator Obama, you are highly unlikely to win the nomination. So the only rational explanation for your campaign’s continued smears and attacks on Obama at this point is to weaken his chances for the general election. Because if he wins the Presidency, your next opportunity to run for President won’t realistically come until 2016. On the other hand, should he lose to Senator McCain, you can start running for the 2012 Democratic nomination the day after the election on November 4th. I hate to believe this is the reason you are remaining in the race at this point, but to be honest, I no longer give you the benefit of the doubt on the question.
