Remember Mark Penn? Hillary Clinton's chief strategist provided much entertainment during the primary campaign. It's especially worth reminding you of the most famous memo he sent Hillary in which he promised that Barack Obama was, well, toast:
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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 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...
We are never going to say anything about his background - we have to show the value of ours when it comes to making decisions, understanding the needs of most American - the invisible Americans...
conventional wisdom
Also: does Mark Penn still believe what he wrote in this memo? Or was he simply telling the Clinton campaign the sort of stuff they might like to hear? Actually, that's unfair: I imagine Penn did believe this, or at least convinced himself to believe it, takin the view that, yo, it's all in the game...