I recommend checking out Jon Chait's rebuke of Mark Penn's predictable "centrist" idiocy. It just takes me back to early 2007. I was an Obama supporter from very early on--probably not long after his announcement in February of that year. I sensed something from the guy, didn't quite know what, but I knew that this guy could win, and that he should win. I worried at a number of points during that campaign season but I never seriously considered backing anyone else, in part because the other options were so unpalatable. But Clinton was perhaps the worst choice, not because of she lacks talent or intelligence (which she doesn't), but because the woman simply has no ability to judge talent or character in others. Her senior staff were clueless loyalists, to a person, at best. At worst...well, you had Mark Penn. An enabler of everything that is wrong with American Politics today. A guy who combines the good judgment of Bob Shrum, the insight of Dick Morris, and the personal ethics of Jack Abramoff. Ugh.
Put another way, I couldn't vote for someone who could implicitly trust a person like that. In a way, he was Hillary Clinton's Sarah Palin, at least for me, and certainly for a lot of plugged-in netrootsy types.
