Mark Penn Is Dumber Than Everyone

Hillary's election strategy is legendarily flawed, what with it making her lose and all. Look at the classic fable of New Jersey and Idaho on Super Tuesday: Hillary puts all her time into winning the big state, ignores Idaho, while Obama holds one mega-rally in Boise. She wins New Jersey's delegates 59-48 (+11, for those of you who hate Elite Math) while Obama win's Idaho's delegates 15-3 (+12). Was it just stubbornness, or did she think she would win New Jersey by a larger amount? A newTimearticle reveals that this poor strategy stemmed from the simplest possible explanation: Chief Strategist Mark "Bowser" Penn had no idea what "apportioned delegates" were. He literally did not know the rules of the Democratic party's nominating process.

Ha ha, he's also gross:

Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified -- and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories.

He's a special fella, that Bowser.

 The Five Mistakes Clinton Made [Time]