Saturday Link Orgy

* Good Friday done right.

* Ef is nae Scottish is crap!

* Chippewa Falls-based Lauer Custom Weaponry is a classy business ...

* Faith-based initiatives and Trinity United Church of Christ.

* Two atheists walk into a movie theater at the Mall of America ... [via David Shraub]

* ... while a third discusses Obama's speech.

* So what's keeping Hillary in the race then?

* The Penn Effect.

Oh, No He Didn't!

I will lather myself in mayonnaise and dance naked like a fat chick named Amber 'round the most visible flagpole in Menominee Park on the Fourth of July if this works:

This one is worth keeping an eye on, because we'll be hearing more of it in the days ahead. In the Clinton campaign conference call I mentioned below, Hillary pollster Mark Penn repeatedly said Obama was becoming an "establishment candidate" -- a rather strained effort to use Obama's high-profile endorsements to weaken his insurgent appeal.

MORE: What Beaudrot said.

Mark Penn Put on 24 Hour Suicide Watch

Penn botches another set of polling predictions, leading some to think that Hillary should have skipped Iowa.

Hey, if Clinton really needs a new pollster this guy is probably available ...

Did I Say In Over His Head? I Meant His Head Is On The Chopping Block

Donors and getting squeamish and people are calling for Penn's head:

[I]nternally, a round of recriminations is being aimed at her chief strategist, Mark Penn, as the representative of everything about her pseudo-incumbent campaign that has been too cautious, too arrogant, too conventional and too clueless as to how much the political landscape has shifted since the last Clinton reign. One adviser summed up the biggest challenge that faces the campaign in two words: "Fresh thinking."

Specifically, those inside the campaign and outside advisers fault Penn for failing to see the Iowa defeat coming. They say he was assuring Clinton and her allies right up until the caucuses that they would win it. Says one: "He did not predict in any way, shape or form the tidal wave we saw." In particular, he had assured them that Clinton's support among women would carry her through. Yet she managed to win only 30% of the women's vote, while 35% of them went for Obama.

Oddly enough, the criticism has been around since the point of the campaign when Hillary was well ahead in the polls:

There are senior officials within the campaign — notably, outside advisers say, media consultant Mandy Grunwald and adviser Harold Ickes — who have been worried for months that Clinton was missing the fundamental shift in the electorate. However, their entreaties have gone nowhere.

Jane Hamsher argues that there is a fundamental personality disparity between Hillary and Penn that makes their relationship untenable for long term success...

And no one seems to care for the way Hillary burnt her bridges in Iowa on the way out or how she appears to be looking to scorch more earth in the days to come:

You gotta say this for the Clinton team's strategy: it's different. Instead of asking for votes they've been battering the electorate, telling voters that if they don't like their candidate it's their shortcoming, not hers. Idealism is for losers, and the more you dare to hope the more we'll crush your dreams with negativity. With Mark Penn's 'incumbent' strategy in ruins, last night looked like an opportunity to change her direction by unshackling herself from bad advisors and appealing to voters one-on-one.

That was then, this is now. She could have taken this opportunity to fire Penn and shake herself loose from James Carville and the other weathered barnacles clinging to the hull of her campaign. "I did it the consultants' way," she could have said, "now I'm going to be me." Instead it looks like she's sticking with the old team and their ugly ways. Penn wasted no time telling a group of reporters that their campaign's going to get even nastier as they try to rough up Obama some more.

So far Clinton's campaign events in New Hampshire have been going great, but:

But there are two problems. It was never Hillary Clinton's campaign events that turned people off. At Obama and Edwards events in Iowa, voters explained their opposition to Clinton by pointing to her vote with the White House to classify the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization; or the fact that her campaign had gone negative (the attack on Obama's kindergarten essay and the insinuations of drug-dealing were frequently cited); or the fact that she had embraced Rupert Murdoch after the media magnate spent years tearing into her family. Whatever the reason, it almost always had to do with her past actions or the behavior of her campaign. There's no performance Clinton can put on at these question and answer events that is going to counter that.

The other problem is that this new strategy includes no new message that will inspire people. It introduces no new ideas or principles that undecided voters can identify with from afar. They have to come to her events to see how impressive she is. And even if Hillary Clinton converts every single person at these question and answer sessions, the most people she can reach is 1,000 to 1,500 per day. With election day on Tuesday of next week, she's going to have to do better than that.

(emphases added)

So long as she plays this out as a game of numbers, like a pollster would, she's never going to correct the second problem. Hillary understands that it takes logic, reason and composure to govern, but what the rest of the voting population needs to see from her is the fire and emotion is actually takes to lead.

Mark Penn May be In Over His Head

Clinton's chief strategist continues to spin ... and rather unconvincingly, too.

MORE: Noam Scheiber explains.

Admit Nothing ... In Both Iowa & Iraq

I'm absolutely baffled that Hillary is going full speed ahead with the "experience" tack, especially when it appears that so many people are telling her to change course:

As Clinton flew from Iowa to New Hampshire, her supporters were divided over how she should handle the early defeat. Paul Begala, a campaign strategist for her husband and a Hillary Clinton supporter, said she could take one of two approaches: explain away Iowa by dismissing it as unfamiliar territory, diminishing its odd caucus system and portraying it as Obama's neighboring state; or accept responsibility for the loss, saying, " 'I've been knocked on my rear end. It's not fun, but the view from the canvas can be instructional.' "

"America loves an underdog," Begala said. "Candidates can show their character in defeat."

But the Clinton campaign did not appear poised to take the advice. The senator from New York and the former president started the day taking jabs at Iowa, justifying Clinton's third-place finish. And for those who counseled that she could not campaign both as an agent of change and the most experienced candidate in the race, Clinton had a clear answer: Her two-sided message would not be altered much.

[Why the "two-sided" message sucks, here.]

This refusal to change gears reminds me of Clinton's refusal to apologize for her vote to authorize the Iraq war. I can sympathize with why she would not want to beg the mercy of public opinion for her sins in Mesopotamia, but I just don't understand what why the hell she just can't move beyond the Iowa strategy.

The only thing that comes to mind would be polling or focus group data that suggests that voters find this to be a weakness in a female candidate, but one would have to imagine that this same kind of "I regret nothing!" attitude, so prevalent in the current Bush Administration, wouldn't play well with Democrats ... and it's clearly not a terribly popular strategy even within Clinton's own circle:

So far, no senior Clinton advisers have been ousted for failing to produce a victory in Iowa, despite their spending many months and millions of dollars there only to see the candidate's status as the Democratic front-runner vanish. But supporters outside the campaign were quick to question Mark Penn, the chief strategist, whose polling data suggested she could win in Iowa; Patti Solis Doyle, the campaign manager, who moved to Iowa to try to eke out a win; and an inner circle of operatives whose "inevitability" strategy failed to blunt the message of "change" that swept Obama into first place Thursday night.

If Hillary loses New Hampshire -- and at this rate this is quickly becoming a reality -- she'll have a little less than a month until Clusterfuck Tuesday. During that time she'll likely lose South Carolina and possibly Nevada (especially if the culinary workers union decides to endorse Obama following a hypothetical NH win). If she does lose next Tuesday, I wouldn't be surprised to see a wholesale massacre of campaign staff and a head-to-toe retooling of the campaign message gearing up for February 5th that will involve a less Thatcheresque Hillary and one of a more conciliatory tone (but not necessarily on Iraq, at least so long as it recedes from being a major campaign issue as it seems to have done in recent weeks).

Clinton's Ongoing Theme

On TV this morning I heard a Clinton surrogate, Ann Lewis, repeat a refrain I've heard from Hillary over and over again several times during the last few weeks, which sounds something to the extent of: "I have 35 years experience of being a change agent."

Be that as it may, this line just doesn't jive for me on several accounts. The first is the seeming contradiction between "experience" and "change." They just don't seem to go together. The only person in the last 35 years that I can think of who has that much experience causing change is Madonna.

Second is the emphasis on the "experience" part of the equation. I know I'm not the first person to say this, but in a lot of ways I think Hillary has fallen into the same trap that Bill set for Bob Dole in '96. When Dole said he wanted to build a bridge to the past, Bill skillfully inverted the formula and told voters he was looking to build a bridge to the future. "Experience," at least in the way Hillary seems to be talking about it, is backward looking.

The problem with looking back these days is that, while the '90s may not have been that long ago chronologically speaking, they were an eternity ago on a sheer events-per-capita basis (if you will). What's gone on in the last eight years has been enough to fill half a dozen administrations and Hillary advisers don't seem to grasp that.

In a lot of ways the Bush mantra that "9/11 changed everything!" is true. While certainly not in the way it's been used to justify every form of government action from war to the erosion of various civil liberties, the phrase does ring true on a fundamentally psychological level. We, as a country, can't go back to the go-go '90s and on a very basic level everyone understands that.

And even if we could, what would that say about American society? One of the great things about being an American is that we are always looking for progress, we're always looking to expand our horizons. Sometimes that that leads to less-than-desirable enterprises, like Manifest Destiny, but other times this drive gets us to the Moon. Hillary's basic message is to ignore this very American impulse, and when you throw in all the very personal baggage she's been carrying with her for the last two decades it's no wonder she's been hemorrhaging support in the last few weeks.

The weird thing is that Bill knows this and has been ignored. His appearances on the campaign trial may have been yielding mixed results, but the dude should be listened to behind the scenes. Right now Clinton has little left to resort but to go negative and start throwing some serious punches. But shes has two things going against her. The first is time. New Hampshire votes in three days and the Clinton camp clearly hasn't retooled its message. The second is its track record of going negative, which has been dismal. Those two factors will start to put the squeeze on Clinton independent of the Obama steamroller that's currently pushing her to the side of the party.

So, really, what's left for Hillary if the messaging is off, the negative attacks haven't been working and the clock is ticking? The only thing I can think of is for an aggressive "All hands on deck!" call in New Hampshire, where the Clinton family roots run fairly deep. The campaign would almost double down on staff and resources to try to bring out it's base in state and start to call in every favor they feel they are owed. That can't hurt them among Democrats, but it will not be enough in a state with a huge independent voter population.

MORE: From the NY Times by way of Andrew Sullivan:

One longtime adviser complained that the campaign’s senior strategist, Mark Penn, realized too late that “change” was a much more powerful message than “experience.” Another adviser said Mr. Penn and Mr. Clinton were consumed with polling data for so long, they did not fully grasp the personality deficit that Mrs. Clinton had with voters.

Advisers said that both Clintons had miscalculated the endurance and depth of what they called “the Obama phenomenon.” They both believed that, in the final months of 2007, more voters would question whether Mr. Obama was ready to be president and more reporters would pick apart his political record and personal character. Now anger inside the campaign at the news media has hardened; Mr. Clinton, in particular, believes reporters will be complicit if Mr. Obama becomes the nominee and loses to a Republican.

(emphasis added)

Blaming the media -- the last refuge of scoundrels!

Well, not really ... often times it's entirely justified. But the hardest thing for a campaign to do is to look at itself and evaluate what kind of problems are occurring internally. That's clearly not happening. Which may mean that the people running Clinton's campaign, which are primarily devoted loyalists who have been with the Clintons for ages by now, may be suffering from a combination of "groupthink" and arrogance that they -- and only they -- know what's best for the country. In short, the same "bunker mentality" that has been symptomatic of the current Bush Administration.

For some more of my thoughts on Penn, see here.

Rove vs. Penn

One of the fascinating side bets that are going on behind the scenes of the Presidential race is the battle between the consultants. Hillary Clinton's pollster, Mark Penn, despite his reluctance to speak to the press, had strategically positioned himself over the course of the last year to inherit the mantel of the super-consultant previously worn by Karl Rove. He even published a book this year (just like the rest of the candidates!) called "Microtrends" that apparently builds off the science of "micro-targeting" that Rove perfected in Texas.

Well, after last night Penn is certainly feeling some heat. Not only did his "inevitable" candidate get clobbered, but he spent most of last week slamming the Des Moines Register poll which said as much was going to happen and most of last night doing damage control.

Wherein arrives a delicious dilemma...

Just before the stunning GOP defeat in the 2006 midterm elections, Karl Rove himself sat for an interview with NPR and dismissed all previous polling that suggested Republicans were about to get their asses handed to them. Rove said he had "THE math" that showed the GOP doing better than polls predicted they would. Rove was obviously wrong and anyone listening to the discussion would have immediately recognized the interview as a valiant attempt at spinning a bad situation in order to rally the troops to the polls despite the grim propects.

To that end, you have to admire the way Rove took one for the team. His job, and more importantly his reputation, is to be correct, not to be optimistic. Pollsters and prognosticators need to be right, it's in their anal retentive blood -- and when they're wrong it's usually extremely embarrassing (largely because they operate in such a public manner). Rove was full of shit and he knew it. If you listen to the interview you can pick up the tone of frustration in his voice. He's frustrated because he can't tell the world what he knows and is a bit miffed that he has to go out there and play spin doctor when he knows better.

But, and to his credit, Rove never broke. He has yet to lead on that "THE math" he had access to was any different than the available polling numbers. I'm sure he'll dish someday (perhaps in his memoirs), but by then the statute of limitations will have run out.

So Penn must have been taken by the same feeling of frustration last night when reporters kept hounding him on the flight out to New Hampshire about the way he was dogging the Des Moines Register poll. In fact, he was so frustrated that he cracked and admitted that his whole harangue against the DMR was utter bullshit.

Basically, Penn owned up to lying to the national press corps. That can't be good.

I don't know how much play something like this is going to get in the media; in fact, I'd imagine it would get very little. But it is indicative of something that I started to notice earlier in December: Clinton's crack team of political operatives seem to have forgotten their A-game. These guys have literally written the book on Democratic campaigning and Iowa may have demonstrated that the book needs to be rewritten.

MORE: I just thought of a simpler way of explaining Penn's situation viz. the DMR poll: At the end of the day, Penn would rather be perceived as a liar in the eyes of the press than someone who is an incompetent pollster.

Such are the egos that govern the lives of we mere mortals!

EVEN MORE: Noam Scheiber has another take on Penn's emotional state on the plane out to New Hampshire