That explains it then

Crimson:

Last week’s resignation of Mark J. Penn ’76 could have dealt a blow to Harvard’s presence in the political world—that is, if Hillary Clinton’s lead campaign advisor hadn’t been replaced by a fellow former resident of Matthews Hall.

Penn resigned his spot as chief campaign strategist on Sunday after revelations that he had advised the Colombian government on a trade treaty that his long-time client opposed. Early the next week, Penn was replaced by another former Crimson writer and prominent pollster, Geoffrey D. Garin ’75...

No wonder she's losing.

"Masters of the Universe"

Ezra Klein has called this video "the most arresting segment of political television I've seen since the campaign started", and I have to agree. Mark Penn, David Axelrod and Joe Trippi share a screen on Hardball and demonstrate all the tragic flaws of this Democratic field. Watch:

If you need to go take a shower before you continue reading, I understand.

...Even if it wasn't constantly interrupted by the nails-on-chalkboard screech of Chris Matthews, this would be an unpleasant thing to see. All of these men have been beaten to within an inch of their lives by the rigor of the campaign schedule, and amid the exhaustion they've all internalized the meaningless platitudes of their respective candidates in the place of actual thought. These are hollow men.

Penn is of course the worst offender; however brilliant a strategist he might be (and that is in question lately), he is not made for TV, and the bullshit he's spouting is so transparent it'd embarrass a used-car salesman. Axelrod, standing quite literally "out in the weeds", seems to have neither the ability nor the desire to enter the conversation at all. And Trippi, who has never been good at controlling his temper, looks -- probably to his credit -- like he's desperately repressing the urge to either storm off the set or grab for Penn's jugular. This is politics at its worst: half Oscar Wilde comedy of manners, half cockfight.

You know, watching these guys makes me realize how upset I really am at the way this campaign is turning out. We had such a great field and nothing materialized. Hillary could have been an inspirational candidate if she hadn't run such a goddamned mechanical campaign; Obama was the most promising figure the Party's had in decades and he decided to throw progressives under the bus; and Edwards -- who I am nevertheless proud to support -- is clearly the worst imaginable messenger for what should be a winning message. All the other candidates (even the cool ones like Chris Dodd) couldn't get a word in edgewise. My God, who'd have guessed that the most interesting person in the whole 2008 race would turn out to be Mike Huckabee?

Atrios said something today that hit me pretty hard:

Whoever does become the Democratic nominee had better plan to win the general election. If they screw it up, they will become the most hated political figure in Democratic circles for years, like Mike Dukakis only 1000x times worse. If you can't manage beat one of these clowns in the wake of Mr. 24%'s reign of error....

Quite right. This election is ours to lose and the consequences are dire -- but with these kinds of people running the campaigns, I really wouldn't rule it out...

COUNTERPOINT: Improve your health and emotional well-being by reading Kevin Drum instead.

I guess it's human nature to obsess more than we should on flaws and weaknesses, but honestly, these three are all pretty damn good Democratic candidates. With the possible exception of the Dr. Jekyll half of LBJ, any one of them would be the most liberal president in the past half century — and unquestionably the most liberal since 1969.

And electability? They're all electable. Every single one of them is an almost certain winner next November if they run even a merely competent campaign. [...]

Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are all solid liberal candidates; all of them are pretty good at inspiring their own base; and all of them seem to know how to run a campaign. I'm still dithering about who to support, but while I have issues with all three of them, I'm mostly dithering because they're all really good and the differences between them are, frankly, pretty small. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Troubling

So you know Mark Penn? The high-powered pollster who runs the most high-powered campaign in our party? The man whose data analyses substantially impact Democratic political strategy? Well, uh... heh-heh... turns out he's making shit up.

Ezra Klein writing for In These Times:

Unlike most pollsters, Penn never releases his raw numbers, only his analysis. So we must take it on faith that his methodology is rigorous, his polls accurate and his interpretations fair. [Penn's new book, "Microtrends,"] is our first opportunity to observe, at length, how adroitly Penn handles raw data. And the answer is stunning, even to a doubter like me. Mark Penn cannot handle numbers. If this book were turned in as the final to an entry-level statistics class, Penn would not only be failed, but the professor might well retire in shame.

[...]Penn was talking about actual lefties—people who are born left-handed. Increasingly grim, I absorbed the first hard blows of Penn’s interpretative technique: “More lefties,” he enthuses, “could mean more military innovation: Famous military leaders from Charlemagne to Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to Napoleon—as well as Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf—were left-handed.” He uses the same thunderingly awful logic to argue that we’ll see more art and music greats, more famous criminals, more great comedians, more “executive greatness,” and better tennis and basketball players.

This is what statisticians—or anyone who has taken a statistics class—call a “correlation/causation error.” It is not enough to cherrypick a couple famed military leaders, notice that they’re lefties and assume that something intrinsic to their handedness caused their tactical genius. It is not enough to say that past cultures discouraged left-handedness and use that as a stand-in for discouraging creativity of all sorts. To say that Bill Gates is right-handed does not suggest that a greater proportion of right-handed people would mean more Bill Gateses. For a professional pollster to imply that correlation equals causation is like a firefighter trying to put out flames by tossing a toaster into the blaze—it bespeaks a complete unfamiliarity with the relevant techniques.

What’s more amazing is this: A page earlier, Penn argues that the rise in lefties has nothing to do with there being more lefties, and everything to do with more permissive parenting. In other words, where children used to be trained out of left-handedness, now parents “shrug their shoulders, saying it’s okay.” So not only does Penn fail to prove that lefties are genetically different in some important way, he also suggests that the gene pool is no different, and that there are as many of them around now as always. It’s a fallacy atop an error built around something that isn’t happening.

Klein has several more examples, all equally hilarious -- my favorite is where Penn declares, apropos of nothing, that “ten people with bazookas can overcome 1,000 people with picket signs, but they can’t overcome 10,000 people with picket signs.” (Counterpoint: Yes they can. They have bazookas.) It's not just that this is flawed polling, rather it's TRANSPARENTLY flawed polling, which is subsequently used to back up insane conclusions that the data wouldn't support even if it WERE any good. The mind reels.

I am trying to convince myself that this is all just some giant Karl Rove-style headfake, an attempt to convince everyone that Hillary's campaign is obviously doomed and thus win the expectations game. It better be. Because failing that, I'm force to conclude that Mark Penn is not a brilliant pollster but rather the world's greatest bullshit artist, and I'm not ready to face such a discomforting fact.

Read the whole review. And if you're really a masochist, buy the book. But I caution that I am not legally liable for any brain injuries which may ensue -- you expose yourself to this stuff entirely at your own risk...