Fresh off her victories on Tuesday that have once again roiled the Democratic race, the Washington Post has a must read piece today that gives an inside look at a chaotic Clinton campaign:
With a flurry of phone calls and e-mail messages that began before polls closed, campaign officials made clear to friends, colleagues and reporters that they did not view the wins as validation for the candidate's chief strategist, [Mark Penn]. "A lot of people would still like to see him go," a senior adviser said.
The depth of hostility toward Penn even in a time of triumph illustrates the combustible environment within the Clinton campaign, an operation where internal strife and warring camps have undercut a candidate once seemingly destined for the Democratic nomination. Clinton now faces the challenge of exploiting this moment of opportunity while at the same time deciding whether the squabbling at her Arlington headquarters has become a distraction that requires her intervention.
Many of her advisers are waging a two-front war, one against Sen. Barack Obama and the second against one another, but their most pressing challenge is figuring out why Clinton won in Ohio and Texas and trying to duplicate it. While Penn sees his strategy as a reason for the victories that have kept her candidacy alive, other advisers attribute the wins to her perseverance, favorable demographics and a new campaign manager. Clinton won "despite us, not because of us," one said.
But there is a Penn camp, however small, that believes in his message of strength, experience, and fear of recession and crisis -- and its most important members are Bill and Hillary Clinton. Three times, campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and senior adviser Harold Ickes tried to hire another national pollster so Penn would not be the one to test his own message, campaign sources said, and three times they were rejected. When the candidate forced out Solis Doyle last month after a string of defeats, the departing manager said Penn should also be fired, to no avail, sources said.
Penn declined to respond when reached yesterday, but he has been firing back in conversations with compatriots in recent days, arguing that he never had control of the campaign's finances or organization, instead blaming Ickes, Solis Doyle and her deputy, Mike Henry, who resigned. "Mark Penn's point is: 'I didn't do any of the spending,' " said a campaign colleague who has heard the argument.
The Clinton camp ended up spending nearly $7 million in South Carolina, but Obama won in a landslide. On Jan. 26, the day of the election, Penn sent an e-mail to the senior campaign staff comparing Obama's victory there to Jesse L. Jackson's two wins in the 1980s. Bill Clinton made the same comparison to reporters that day, generating even more anger among African Americans who perceived it as a way of marginalizing Obama by portraying him as a black candidate who appeals only to black voters.
As Clinton strategists woke up the next morning, they realized that the African American constituency, a backbone of the Democratic coalition, was permanently lost to her. Only then were some of his closest former aides, such as Sosnik, former White House lawyer Cheryl D. Mills and fundraiser Terence R. McAuliffe, tapped to talk with him about reining in his rhetoric, and a daily conference call was established to try to enforce it.
"You had your Hillary people, and you had your Bill people," said the top campaign official. "There were some crossovers, but very few. The Hillary people could never tell him to cut the [crap] because they were Hillary people -- and vice versa."
The Clintons lent the campaign $5 million, and Solis Doyle and Henry focused resources on a dozen battleground states, mainly large ones such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, as well as Arizona and New Mexico, with large Hispanic populations. But they essentially did not compete in smaller states holding caucuses. Clinton, feeling burned by Iowa, had become allergic to caucuses, deeming them unfair.
Ickes and political director Guy Cecil argued that such states were important because even if she lost, she would pick up delegates with a strong showing. That would soon become clear. Clinton racked up big wins in California, New Jersey and even Kennedy's Massachusetts. But she lost the caucus states, and because of the party's proportional rules, it cost her.
Ickes was characteristically blunt on the conference call after Super Tuesday. It was quite likely that Clinton would lose the next 11 contests, colleagues recall him saying. Cecil had submitted plans for post-Feb. 5 states, but they had been rejected. The campaign had not initially thought the nomination battle would go beyond Super Tuesday and it was out of cash. "We were running on fumes," one aide said.
Nerves were raw by this point. Penn and Grunwald engaged in a 15-minute squabble that later made it into the media over which ad to run in Virginia. He wanted an ominous one called "Freefall" that warned of bad economic times, while she wanted one called "Can Do" featuring the candidate talking against patriotic music about solving problems. Cecil grew so exasperated, he stood up and left. "This is ridiculous," he said, according to people in the room. "You guys need to grow up. You're acting like kids. I've got work to do."
A more explosive example of the stress came a few days later. Phil Singer, the campaign's deputy communications director, emerged from a meeting on Feb. 11 and without explanation started angrily cursing the war room. "[Expletive] all of you," he shouted, according to a witness, then stormed out and did not return for several days.
Penn was growing increasingly aggravated by what he saw as an untenable management structure, which another aide described as an "oligarchy at the top." Penn had no real people of his own on the inside and chafed whenever Solis Doyle or Ickes got involved in his sphere. At one point, he and Ickes, who have been battling each other within the Clinton orbit for a dozen years, lost their tempers during a conference call, according to two participants.
"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted.
"[Expletive] you!" Penn replied.
"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted again.
By now, Williams had decided it was untenable to stay unless she was really running the campaign. Clinton called Solis Doyle on Feb. 9 as she was losing three more states, and the decision was announced the next day when she lost a fourth. It was painful for both, because Solis Doyle had worked for Clinton most of her adult life. Henry, her deputy, turned in his resignation letter the next day and stayed just long enough to see out three more losses, in Virginia, Maryland and the District.
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