• Erin

  +1

  From now on, I'm only sending messages by courier pigeon, which will then self-destruct upon reading (the messages, not the pigeons).

  Posted 8/12/2008 respond (flag)

Inside Camp Clinton
Taylor Marsh — ... The most stunning part is that some Clintonties handed over this dirt: I approached a number of current and former Clinton staffers and outside consultants and asked them to share memos, e-mails, meeting minutes, diaries-?"anything that would offer a contemporaneous account. They did and the result is an amazing look inside via Josh Green: ...

The Hillary Campaign Memos Go Live
Talking Points Memo — ... Josh Green's much-anticipated article in The Atlantic about the struggles in Hillaryland has just gone live online, complete with a ...

The Clinton Campaign Memos
The Atlantic Politics Channel — Read the article here. Read the memos here. The Atlantic's Josh Green obtained hundreds of internal e-mails and memorandums circulating among top aides to Hillary Clinton and has woven them into a fascinating narrative of her failed campaign. Here, in detail and backed up by evidence, is the story of what really happened. The memos, e-mail and Josh's reporting, describe, in detail: ** The battle for strategic supremacy and chaos in the campaign ** Mark Penn and the rest of the staff debating ...

Thar's Gold in Them Thar Memos
Political Punch — ... Thar's Gold in Them Thar Memos August 11, 2008 7:12 PM The Atlantic has provided a link to Josh Green's fantastic story as well as to ...

"The Front-Runner's Fall:" An Excellent Read.
Blah3 Feed — Josh Green has written the definitive post-mortem on the Clinton candidacy. Here's part of the intro: Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large themes (Clinton’s late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar champion had been the idea all along) and the small details (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters). The second was the thought: ...

Atlantic’s bombshell on Hillary’s internal memos not much of a bombshell, really
Hot Air » Top Picks — Atlantic’s bombshell on Hillary’s internal memos not much of a bombshell, really posted at 8:45 pm on August 11, 2008 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | printer-friendly I read the piece itself but not the actual memos — although, given what Jake Tapper found , maybe I should have. The one semi-bombshell detail, Mark Penn’s strategy to target (by implication) Obama’s “lack of American roots” , was scooped by Politico a few days ago so all that’s left is a little extra flesh on the bones of a story most people were already ...

Video: “Obama Believer”
Sister Toldjah — ... Semi-related: The Atlantic has a blockbuster story today that takes an in-depth look on how Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama. The article includes never before published emails and memos, some of them highly explosive. Make sure to read the whole thing. (Via ...

How Clinton Lost
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — Today's must-read piece is from Josh Green: "Hillary Clinton's campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos -- published here for the first time -- reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown." The memos which were the basis of the article are also all online.

Obama on Vacation, Yet Earns More & Better Coverage than McCain
NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias — ... In a March 2007 memo obtained by the Atlantic magazine, Mark Penn, the top strategist for Obama’s then rival Senator Hillary Clinton, wrote that the campaign should draw attention to Obama’s heritage. Obama’s, quote, “boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii exposes a very strong weakness for him – his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a President during a time of war who is not at the center fundamentally American in his thinking and values. Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the ...

Why Clinton Lost: The Memos
Slublog — Great story by The Atlantic. This part made me chuckle a bit. Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large themes (Clinton’s late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar champion had been the idea all along) and the small details (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters).Yes, I suppose Hillary running into the woman that, er, spent ...

The (Innocent) Obama Tapes Mark Penn Wanted Released
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — ... The piece, titled "The Front-Runner's Fall" was based off of more than 200 internal emails and memos many of which were posted online. And, sure enough, within a matter of minutes one of those documents was causing quite a buzz. ...

"Save it for 2050"
Stubborn Facts — Hillary endorsed McCain, remember? Not hard to see why: [Obama's] roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I [Mark Penn] cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values ... Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t.

About Those Clinton Memos
TalkLeft — The Atlantic has released a series of internal memos from the Hillary Clinton campaign. The memos are here. Hillary Clinton’s campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos—published here for the first time—reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown. ....What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not ...

Karl Rove: Michelle Obama Deserves FOX News’ Attacks On Her
News Hounds — ... for the segment, it was a pretty safe bet that what Obama had claimed was a false portrayal would be reiterated to the "fair and balanced" network's audience rather than balanced with a rebuttal. That’s exactly what happened. Rove told Sean Hannity, “I hope (Obama) realizes FOX News was reporting on inappropriate comments by his wife and the best way to deal with this is to not have her make more of them.” For good measure, Rove also went on to praise Mark Penn’s recently-revealed strategy to attack Obama’s “lack of American roots.” When it was Alan ...

Author of Atlantic's Hit Job on Hillary Lied About Al Gore Too
Tennessee Guerilla Women — ... said he invented the internet. In fact, Green is one of the irresponsible 'journalists' who helped put Bush, instead of Gore, into the White House. Joshua Green, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of the latest hit job on Hillary Rodham Clinton, inadvertently reminds readers that he once wrote for The Onion (seriously) when he actually suggests (on page one) that his hit job is "empirical truth." The Atlantic's long awaited hit job on Hillary Rodham Clinton is breathlessly billed by Atlantic columnist Marc Ambinder as ...

Read These Now So LSD Can Save You
Shakesville — Russian President Medvedev orders end to Russian military operations in Georgia. (Guardian) (NY) (WP) President Bush's statement on the Georgia-Russia war. (WH) US has little influence in Georgia crisis, Rice won't interrupt holiday. (Raw Story) Bush drunk at the Olympics. (Four Winds) Sarkozy head to Russia and Georgia. (Reuters) Atlantic article details the internal strife of Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. Obama moves ...

WaPo's Bennett fired back at Clinton camp
Michael Calderone's Blog — ... Joshua Green's much-anticipated Atlantic piece on Clinton campaign infighting went online last night, and included some revealing memos and letters. Additional details of staff rancor emerged, as well as, some issues dealing with the press. ...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — ... Seems all those Clinton followers who are still bitter and angry are aiming their ire at the wrong subject. They're all furious with Obama. But, the fault lies with their own campaign and candidate. Joshua Green's piece in The Atlantic corroborates a lot of what was written earlier -- but with evidence from inside. ...

"Some Democrats say..."
Power Line — ... . (The Atlantic article on which the ABC News report is based is accesssible in full here .) The source for Tapper's charge that the McCain campaign is taking Mark Penn's advice to Hillary Clinton? "Some Democrats..." And ABC adds that portraying Obama as foreign is a near cousin to attacking Obama because of his race. Is an updated version of ...

Behind the scenes at Clinton HQ
Political Animal — ... I’d just point out a couple of additional angles. First, as you may have heard, Mark Penn recommended a brutal, xenophobic series of attacks, which Clinton, to her credit, rejected. From a Penn memo: ...

MORNING READ
News — ... , who sees TPM playing the race card. The internal Clinton memos, obtained by The Atlantic , show that Clinton strategist Penn failed to account for the import of the black vote, writes FiveThirtyEight's ...

Unready On Any Day
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — ... Josh Green's Hillary-busting expose of the chaos and drift and nastiness that bedeviled her campaign is a must-read. I'll be noting memos through the day, but Josh's conclusion is pretty hard to ignore: ...

Quote For The Day
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — ... "The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun, and a third party would come in then anyway," - Mark Penn, in a Clinton campaign memo. ...

Clinton Memos Lay Bare Early Plans
44 — ... -- some 130 of the nearly 200 obtained by reporter Josh Green. They do not alter the fundamental understanding of the campaign's weaknesses -- everyone, it seems, shares some blame for the misreadings and strife that led to her defeat -- but they offer a striking illumination of how far in advance some senior advisers warned of potential financial and political pitfalls and possibilities. Former chief strategist Mark Penn, who has taken so much heat in the race, lays out in an early 2007 memo the exact coalition that ended up giving Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a winning ...

Stuff on the Web
RIGHTWINGSPARKLE — Obama is trying to not let McCain get the biker vote with a new radio ad, called "Motorcycle," "But when it comes to his record, American-made motorcycles like Harleys don’t matter to John McCain," Good luck with that one buddy. Reading Josh Green’s Atlantic Monthly piece on the Clinton campaign and all the campaign memos and emails from the campaign is painful reading even for us who can't stand Hillary. The memos show how a campaign is such a manipulation of the American opinion. Not that all ...

Mark Penn Gives Advice: Negative Ads Work
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — ... Yesterday's Atlantic piece on the inner workings of the Hillary Clinton campaign didn't do much for Mark Penn's reputation. On the contrary, it showed him to be an unabashed (and unsuccessful) dirty campaigner. But that doesn't stop Penn from offering some self-congratulatory campaign advice ...

Obama's Celeb Call-List
Weekly Standard Blog — ... Forget about the Hillary emails. More interesting is Obama'a correspondence with several celebrities. Obama lived in California for two years, matriculating at Occidental College, before transferring to Columbia. But before he left Los Angeles, he seems to have internalized the cult of celeb-worship. He appeared with his kids on Entertainment Tonight. He's done an interview with US Weekly. (McCain is still waiting for his equal time on that one.) And he seems totally gaga with several Hollywood stars who've endorsed him. ...

A question for expert Journos out there
culturekitchen - fresh dissent served daily — Yes, I am looking at you Jay Rosen In The Front-Runner’s Fall, Joshua Green claims to have emails documenting the implosion of the Clinton campaign : "Hillary Clinton’s campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos—published here for the first time—reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown." I have to ask : How can they publish what is supposed to be private correspondence? Or is there some privacy clause that applies ...

Orgy of I-Told-You-Sos
Swampland — The cache of memos that fueled the fall-of-HRC Atlantic story (mentioned yesterday) is here. If the McCain camp is paying attention -- and, to be honest, I hope they're not -- are they studying these memos to learn what to do or what not to do?

Unready To Lead
JustOneMinute — This, from Joshua Green's obit of the Clinton campaign, is interesting: Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large themes (Clinton’s late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar champion had been the idea all along) and the small details (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters). The second was the thought: Wow, it was even worse than I’d imagined! The anger and ...

Josh Green. Atlantic . Clinton. Memos. Read It.
MoJo Blog Posts: mojo — ... Josh Green. Atlantic . Clinton Memos. Just Read It. It's the article everyone's talking about today: Josh Green of the Atlantic gets reams of internal Clinton campaign memos, emails, and other documents from former staffers and runs down the most important parts. Take a gander . I'll highlight just two things. First, Clinton emerges as a terrible executive. She is unable to hire people who work well together or people who, though at odds, create a useful tension. She is unable to settle disputes after they arise or provide direction that keeps them from arising in the first ...

Wolfson: Hillary's Senior Advisers All Rejected Penn's Push For Xenophobic Campaign
TPM Election Central — ... I just reached former Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson to ask him for comment on Josh Green's big piece in The Atlantic reporting that chief Hillary strategist Mark Penn suggested a big effort to draw a contrast with Obama's "limited" roots to American values and culture, as Penn put it in a ...

The Clinton Psychodrama
Balloon Juice — ... I swore I would avoid the Josh Green piece on the Clinton campaign, but I am apparently as weak as many of you suspect, and lo and behold, it was every bit as much a disaster as expected. Reading this, it almost appears sympathetic to Hillary in the respect that she really was led astray by infighting and foolish advice, all while being beaten handily at every part of the game by the Obama campaign. Regardless, that is a foolish notion, as Hillary herself, at the end of the day, is and was responsible for her campaign. ...

Hillary Clinton campaign memos
The Swamp — ... weakness. "I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values," Penn wrote. "He told the people of NH yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell--but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up." Clinton did not attack Obama's roots during her campaign. (Read the full Mark Penn memo about Barack Obama at TheAtlantic.com.) A ...

Iowa expert: An early Edwards exit would have aided Obama, not Clinton
Top of the Ticket — ... Coincidentally, what may be the last word in what went wrong overall with Clinton's candidacy was published today: Joshua Green's much-awaited piece at TheAtlantic.com., which draws on numerous internal memos. Here's Green's nut graph: ...

The Clinton Memos
Obsidian Wings — ... by hilzoy I've read Josh Green's new article in the Atlantic, and the various internal Clinton campaign memos that were released with it. I don't have any particular desire to rehash any of the arguments from the primary, so I won't. I read them mostly because when you've followed a story closely, it's fascinating to get access to what some of the parties involved were actually thinking. Some of it (e.g., the dysfunction in the Clinton campaign) wasn't news, and some of it I've already noted. When I read the whole collection, though, what ...

Investigating Clinton's Fall
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — ... . And in the resulting Atlantic piece, I tried to rely on them as much as I could -- and less on the traditional blind quotes and revisionism that often form the basis for such pieces. ...

Hillary, we hardly knew ye
Megan McArdle — If you haven't checked it out, you should read Josh Green's piece on the implosion of the Clinton campaign, and the internal memos he dug up while writing the story.   The story, and the memos, emphasize just how many times the Clinton campaign shot itself in the foot--burning through money, struggling to find a clear message, and most of all, failing to manage the myriad superegos who were vying for control. What may be underrated is the extent to which Clinton's indecisiveness was a result of the same thing that made it possible:  her marriage to Bill ...

The baby brigade
Some Guy With a Website by August J. Pollak - xoverboard.com — ... The revelations released by The Atlantic today highlighting what everyone who either has at least three brain cells or two brain cells and aren't named Armando already knew- that the chief strategist of the obviously in no way race-baiting and divisive Clinton campaign had a detailed and explicit strategy in mind of race-baiting and being divisive- highlights a lot more than the amazingly startling fact that a handful of stubborn whiners on a handful of websites were somewhat inaccurate in their belief that in no way could Hillary Clinton's campaign been defeated not by ...

Penn Pal
The American Spectator — The publication of pollster Mark Penn's memos on the Atlantic's website throws considerable light on Hillary Clinton's campaign. Advising Hillary Clinton to cast her opponent as insufficiently American, Penn wrote in a March 2007 memo that he couldn't "imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values." This represents Obama's most significant weakness, wrote Penn. He suggested Hillary emphasize in every speech by contrast that she was "born in the middle of America to the middle ...

Three Words On That Atlantic Clinton Story
Oliver Willis — Bullet. Freaking. Dodged. Moving on…

If the witch is dead, why is The Atlantic trying to drown her?
Corrente — Joshua Green explains how running an increasingly effective campaign proves that Hillary sux. “…Hillary Clinton’s epic collapse in the Democratic primaries…” What epic collapse? Millions of anybody-but-Hillary voters like yours truly rallied around her campaign. When it started, how many people did you know who were enthusiastic about her? How about when the primaries ended? “…the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia” Since the media is now in ...

What Josh Green Really Thinks About Hillary Clinton....
The Atlantic Politics Channel — And other subjects discussed in a podcast I just recorded with the author of The Front-runner's Fall.  Click To Play:  

this and that
Bitch. Ph.D. — Have y'all read The Atlantic piece on the Clinton campaign memos? It's fascinating. Not because it reinforces any previous resentment toward their campaign but, as an ex-corporate wench, I thought it laid out a textbook case on organizational mismanagement: no values/strategy alignment, talent confusion, failed information flow and a paralyzing lack of trust between frontline and 'management' staff. Someone should have read a few issues of the HBR. ...

Clinton Campaign Didn’t Grasp Rudimentary Proportionality Math
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — ... The upshot is that the Clinton camp missed easy preparations and unnecessarily wasted and/or misdirected valuable effort. With limited post-Iowa resources, they made miscalculations that surely gave away free delegate points at a time when the pledged delegate race was very tight. With the nomination now long-settled and many other mistakes pointed out by others, the purpose is not to belabor what went wrong because assuredly many things did. Simply, as a site dedicated to the efficient and accurate use of data by political campaigns, we could not let this revelation from ...

Maureen Dowd’s Mind is Made Up: Don’t Confuse Her With Facts
Pajamas Media — ... . So, when Joshua Green dumped the emails people handed over on an ask, Dowd was in tabloid heaven. It was, once again, a dish-rich environment, only this time she could enjoy a bank shot to strafe “Beanpole Guy,” aka Barack Obama, aka ...

Maureen Dowd’s Mind is Made Up: Don’t Confuse Her With Facts
Pajamas Media — ... . So, when Joshua Green dumped the emails people handed over on an ask, Dowd was in tabloid heaven. It was, once again, a dish-rich environment, only this time she could enjoy a bank shot to strafe “Beanpole Guy,” aka Barack Obama, aka ...

Maureen Dowd's Mind Is Made Up: Don't Confuse Her with Facts
Taylor Marsh — ... . So, when Joshua Green dumped the emails people handed over on an ask, Dowd was in tabloid heaven. It was, once again, a dish-rich environment, only this time she could enjoy a bank shot to strafe “Beanpole Guy,” aka Barack Obama, aka ...

Manfred B. Steger: Barack Obama and the Global Imaginary
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... "I am absolutely baffled that anybody would say that Barack doesn't meet every single test of genuine Americanism when you consider his life story," Tom Daschle told reporters recently. The former Senate Democratic leader was reacting to doubts about Obama's "Americanism" which his opponents have been trying to imprint on the public consciousness. Indeed, it wasn't just McCain's attack dogs that growled at the Illinois senator's lack of "patriotism." Thanks to the impressive research efforts of an Atlantic Monthly reporter, we now know that Hillary Clinton's chief ...

Indicative
Comments from Left Field — ... In what is shaping up to be one of the most important elections of our time, the last thing you want to do is try and wage this campaign with a house not merely divided, but in open warfare with each other.  If you want solid proof on how detrimental campaign infighting could be, just take a close look at the internal feuds that ultimately sunk the Clinton campaign.  Further, you have to ask yourself this question; if Clinton couldn’t keep her own team running smoothly when it was just her team, how much worse would it get when it’s both her team and ...

Tension in Denver
If I Ran the Zoo — ... It's always those anonymous staffers, isn't it? It's the people who banked on a sure thing and now can't reconcile themselves to the fact that they won't have jobs in this administration. (Or, given the extraordinarily bitter infighting within the campaign, they're pissed off that ...

Clinton's Wealthy Die-Hards Are Contradicting Her Campaign's Message
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed — ... This line of attack was born in a 2007 Mark Penn memo, in which the strategist wrote: "We are the candidate of people with needs. We win women, lower classes, and Democrats (about 3 to 1 in our favor). Obama wins men, upper class, and independents ... " ...

Penn on Obama and the New Moderates
The Moderate Voice — ... Though Mark Penn served President Clinton exceptionally well, he clearly stumbled in his efforts on behalf of Senator Clinton. One possible explanation for the disparity in his performance may have been as simple a matter as Penn’s rising to his own level of incompetence, poorly executing the role of campaign strategist rather than playing to his strong suit as a master spotter and tapper of megatrends. ...

Will Things Get Better For Conservatives in 2009?
Pajamas Media — ... Fewer still expected that McCain, whose fundraising woes nearly ended his candidacy in late summer 2007, would emerge to win the GOP nomination. Hindsight shows how foolish were the expectations that prevailed as 2007 came to a close. Conservatives shared the Clinton campaign’s belief that the former first lady would score an early knockout in the Democratic primaries, essentially locking up the nomination on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. As Joshua Green of the Atlantic Monthly has since reported , that mistaken belief was a key factor in the failure of Team Hillary to organize ...