A knowledgeable TPM Reader on Le Penn …
On Penn, Clinton, and plans (or lack thereof), I think it’s important to stress that Penn did actually go into this campaign with a plan (a version of the only plan he ever uses). Penn’s great flaw as a pollster is his inability to read an electorate with objectivity and adjust his advice to reality. He only ever sees what he wants to see , so his advice is always some version of his obsession with centrist triangulation (this time with some Margaret Thatcher stoicism thrown in for good measure).
Penn was never going to catch on to this whole ‘change’ thing because to Penn ‘change’ is too wrapped up in the Democratic populism that he has been trying to exterminate in the Democratic Party since the 90s. It is the great irony of this campaign that Penn, champion of the DLC and sworn enemy of populists like Greenberg, Borosage, and Shrum, is now being forced to churn out populist messaging in the dying days of the campaign.
For an interesting trip down memory lane, check out this back and forth between Penn and Will Marshall and Stan Greenberg and Bob Borosage.
