Mark Penn Talks Zhou, Midterms, J6

Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn was a lonely voice of sanity on the Left during the height of the Russia Hoax, but we haven’t heard too much from him for some months. He appeared with Maria Bartiromo to discuss Zhou’s latest attempt to gaslight the public, and what his polling (he’s CEO of Harris) is telling him. As a Dem, Penn treads carefully. For example, he pours cold water all over the notion of another Hillary run—but gently. Meaning, he doesn’t actually laugh out loud.

On the other hand, he confirms what other polling outfits are saying—the Dems are in a hole and, as a former political adviser, he expresses bafflement at the fact that they’re still industriously digging. He’s adamant that they need to learn a new way of walking—the ‘pivot’—and discusses that from several policy perspectives, including the economy, immigration, and crime.

Interestingly, while discussing Dem disarray, he makes a statement that Maria fails to pick up on—that in contrast to the lack of leadership on the Left, Republicans appear to Penn to be ready to coalesce around Trump. He says that based on his polling. Lindsey!’s recent admonishments to McConnell regarding “working with” Trump may reflect similar polling on the GOP side. I would have been interested to hear what Penn had to say about the ill-advised continued Dem legal jihad against Trump—a broadly popular figure in America, viewed as having been cheated in a fraud riddled election, and seemingly the leader of what is currently the majority party, as poll after poll is showing.

Penn’s most pointed remarks occur in the second half of the interview, when he indirectly touches on the closely related topic of the treatment of the J6 protesters. Penn maintains, in the context of Zhou’s Georgia speech flop, that Zhou’s deeply divisive attacks on Americans of pallor—Penn doesn’t use that phrase, but it’s out there in the media and in the Dem House under the dog whistle rhetoric of “white nationalism—is deeply unpopular and (yes, he says this) un-American. His exact words are that the prosecutions of peaceful demonstrators run directly contrary to traditional American values. 

In Penn’s view the smart approach would have been to pardon or, more technically, decline prosecution of all but violent J6 protesters. Of course, the Zhou regime doesn’t do smart, and neither does the Dem party—and Penn knows that. He can only, more or less, shake his head at the wrongheadedness of it all. He recognizes and identifies the overreach of what Pelosi’s illegal “commission” is doing, and knows that it shocks many Americans. Here, again, I’d have been interested to have heard Penn’s views on the shameful SCOTUS wink and nod to the Dem’s extra-legal J6 Jihad and the broader issue that this raises of the growing divide between Americans and the DC Establishment.

The interview is what it is—coming from one with his background it deserves consideration—and it’s embedded below. Perhaps Penn will pen a longer commentary on these topics: