Top Clinton Aide Leaving His Post Under Pressure
Mark Penn is being forced to relinquish his position in the Clinton campaign after his dealings on the Columbian trade agreement threatened to undermine Hillary's support amongst blue collar workers.
Mark Penn stepped down after a row over a potential conflict of interest involving his public relations firm.
Mr Penn's company had been employed by the Colombian government to help it pursue a free-trade agreement with the US - a deal Mrs Clinton opposes.
There will be few amongst the Clinton camp who will be sorry to see Penn go, with the obvious exception of Hillary herself.
After all this is the man who came up with Clinton's bizarre game plan which we have all been watching slowly unravel for months now.
I have always thought that the plan to concentrate on big state primaries was fighting a battle for the democratic nomination as if one was fighting an election against a Republican for the presidency. They are two entirely separate things, with the former concentrating on delegates, a point which the Clinton camp seemed unaware of until it was far too late.Mr. Penn advocated the plan to focus on a limited number of big state primaries, ignoring many smaller states and caucuses, where Mr. Obama built what appears to be an impregnable lead in pledged delegates.
Mr. Penn also early on resisted efforts to humanize Mrs. Clinton, insisting that her personality was not a detriment and that voters would be drawn to her experience and presumed competence. He repeatedly pointed to polling data to support his position, leading to battles with other aides who later said it was the glimpses of vulnerability and humanity seen after her loss in Iowa that enabled her to rebound.
Whilst Clinton was behaving in a presidential manner Obama was hoovering up delegates left, right and centre; and we were left with the strange spectacle of Hillary and her supporters producing ever more tortured logic to tell us why Obama's most recent victory didn't matter.
Once they did realise what had happened, camp Clinton started arguing that Michigan and Florida - which they had previously agreed would not count - suddenly had to be counted or they would be "disenfranchised".
This claim was made despite the fact that the Hillary team were, simultaneously, demanding that super delegates need not be influenced by small matters like the democratic wishes of the voters, and that they should vote for "the candidate who can win"; thereby disenfranchising millions of voters across the country.
As campaigns go, it has hardly been the most coherent.
So one can understand why some of Hillary's supporters might be glad to see the back of Mark Penn. However, his influence is unlikely to diminish too much as he remains on the campaign and he still possesses Hillary's cell phone number.
But the image of incoherence can hardly be helping Hillary and her team as they prepare for the Pennsylvania primary.
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