The Atlantic have published an expose of the Clinton campaign's struggle to defeat Obama, based on access to hundreds of memos sent during the campaign. It's an excellent piece. There will be lots of outrage and hand-wringing over some of its revelations, especially the memo pictured above, written by everyone's favourite punchbag, Mark Penn, Clinton's unpopular chief strategist. In it, Penn goes a long towards suggesting that the campaign tap into the electorate's fears about Obama being foreign/different and somehow unAmerican.
I have to say, unsavoury as this stuff is, I don't think it's worthy of the contumely that will now rain down on Penn and the Clinton campaign generally. Penn is just doing the job of an adviser - pushing the boundaries, marking out potential areas of attack, so that the candidate and the rest of her team can get an idea of the strategic landscape. I didn't see any real evidence that Clinton actually decided to go down the route Penn sketches out in this memo, at least not in its most reprehensible form. But it's a good guide as to where certain elements of the GOP campaign are likely to go in the following months.
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