The WaPo link does not work.

Go Duke.

Hard to imagine that news accounts about Penn will help Burson's reputation or WPP's revenue.

This is just a hatchet job on Penn. Penn is the only one in the campaign who is an adult. The rest are truculent children who could not find their own butts using both hands.

It is a shame that certain members of the HRC campaign can't recognize when a political genius is in their midst. W/O Penn, the campaign would never have recovered from the tailspin. But they did recover on Tuesday, courtesy of Penn's brilliant strategy and media ads

Tembrach, I take it you ARE Mark Penn.

To the extent that Hillary is successful, it's her own brilliance and her Clinton name-brand. To the extent that she's unsuccessful, it's her own lack of charisma and her arrogant, sequestered campaign advisement.

I can't remember which commentator said it last week but when you win you're a genius and when you lose you're a fool, sometimes in the same week.

The article also makes the point that everyone hates Mark--except Bill and Hillary.   I think the issue is that they should have kept him in his pollster roll and had someone else use his results to map out strategy.  According to the Times, that was what Wolfson suggested.

See, I'm not surprised there isn't any wincing as staff, bad-advice givers and temps get tossed overboard. That sort of loyalty is cheap and fleeting.

Any wonder they have to reach back into the dust bin to replace current failures with less recent failures.

But there must be amnesia as people who run for office don't recall who was used, abused and not holding office now (but are w/Barack).

The localest of yokels and decades of seniority in Congress owe their unemployment to the Bill Machine. It's like watching a zombie movie as the walking dead from the 90's are paraded but the camera doesn't show the knives in their back.

What makes any Super think their vote is a ticket to anywhere?

Wake up!

Check out the entry free to be a FOB in this century. They're both set for life and the odds of anyone demanding a favor after the convention is 0.

It's fine for the door to door salesmen who get fat commissions and are ready to pitch another line to another candidate in the next cycle. That's life in the circus.

I'll have no sympathy for anyone who has a real job now and is left twisting in the wind when Bill gets back on his World Tour.

He's probably been grumpy because he knows each day of back slapping is costing him the biggest bucks he's seen.

My advice? Get off that bus before it takes you to somewhere you won't want to be.

(If I wasn't lazy each line above would be supported with a footnote from my stacks of TNR)

It's the pity, stupid.

Hillary's bounce is owed entirely to a Democratic electorate that does not want to see her shamed and humiliated the way she was by Bill. Every time she plays the sympathy card, she enjoys a resurgence. We saw it happen in NH, on Super Tuesday and this week. It's so shameful and sad.

Can anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher pulling this crap?

But BHLnyc, Margaret Thatcher earned her success on her own merits -- she didn't trade on her husband's name as a shortcut to influence and position. So any comparison between the two isn't fair to Hillary. The apt comparison would be to George W. Bush, who similarly exploited family connections to achieve position beyond his own talents. And yes, as a matter of fact, I could imagine Dubya pulling this crap.

"Every time she plays the sympathy card, she enjoys a resurgence."

She's been playing the sympathy card since before Wisconsin, and it didn't do much for her there.  On the other hand, Obama has been a bit more cocky of late, and that's hurting him.  But mostly, her wins were due to more favorable demographics in both states, along with the NAFTA flap and the "Hillary momentum" story in the MSM.

jetzoom - as they say in Penn's biz, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Somehow I think he and Burson-Marsteller will do fine.

Repeating what I wrote on the same topic elsewhere:

The problem with most people involved in politics is that they're political.  They are the worst kind of assholes you hated at work.  

The kind, who while most were doing they real work, they were doing the maneuvering, angling, boss sucking up, and other bullshit that gets you ahead in corporations.  But, adds nothing of value.

Most of politics is a drag on the country and most of it adds no value.  In fact, most of it is self-serving, takes the wealth produced by others and redistributes it to cronies or constituents who are not producing anything.

All the infighting you are seeing now in the Clinton campaign is a microcosm of all that is useless and hateful in the American political process.

A pox on them all.

Susan Estrich ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in history for Dukakis (admittedly not much to work with).  But sh'es been a prominent talking head ever since.  Losing to a tsunami doesn't seem to have hurt her much.

One of the reasons Hillary won in big this week is because voters don't like to be told by the media what to think and how to vote.

I believe that the death watch on Hillary (the second or third one this campaign) pissed a lot of people off.  They said, screw you guys, we're going to give her a reprieve.

Not to mention, the Obama hype has gotten so thick and so obviously media biased, that people were repelled by it.

The press insists on being a player in the political process, and they are.  Only sometimes they have an effect exactly opposite of what they are hoping.

What Chan said. The older you get, the more annoying is the raves-'n'-koolaid stuff.  

I wonder how people would have responded to HRC and BHO had we not had this ridiculous media hatefest for the one and lovefest for the other.