Cross-posted from The Left Anchor.  For those of you who missed our two week long series, you can view all thirteen of our vice presidential profiles here.

The Wall Street Journal did a fine piece on what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign.  The short answer?  Two words: Mark Penn.

As Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign took shape amid her easy Senate
re-election race in 2006, she wanted Mr. Penn to serve as both chief
strategist and sole pollster. Virtually no one else in the campaign
did. Since his work on Mr. Clinton's 1996 re-election, current and
former associates have criticized Mr. Penn as too data-driven, more
comfortable with centrist general-election campaigns than Democratic
primaries, socially awkward and not a strategic thinker.

<snip>

Critics' bigger complaint was that from the campaign's start Mr. Penn had been its only pollster. Other campaigns typically use many pollsters to provide alternative views; Sen. Obama has had up to four. Ms. Solis Doyle says that throughout 2006 and 2007, she urged Sen. Clinton to add more. Sen. Clinton told advisers Mr. Penn is "brilliant," and multiple pollsters would slow consensus on strategy.

But top aides chafed that Mr. Penn used his control of "the numbers" to win most disagreements. "He could go straight to the [former] president of the United States, who in turn got to Hillary," says a senior strategist. "After a while, people just shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Hey, look, this is how she wants her campaign run.'"

Mr. Penn defends his polling analyses, and counters that others were responsible for budgets and field operations. "The misleading thing here is, the title of chief strategist connotes that I was in charge of things," he said. "It was a much more complex structure than any title connotes." As for the core staff's divisions, he evoked Abraham Lincoln's contentious but largely successful cabinet. "I think she had in mind a 'team of rivals' idea, and it almost worked."

Oh, please.  There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton wanted a "team of rivals."  Hillary Clinton's senior staffers had one thing in common: their zealous loyalty to Sen. Clinton.  That's not to be unexpected in a campaign, of course, but to try and compare that to Lincoln's cabinet, wherein he employed people that pretty much hated him is ridiculous.  I also love how Penn continues to weasel out of his responsibilities on the campaign.  The title Chief Strategist doesn't mean he was in charge of strategy?  I guess this is like the O.J. trial and we're all going to have to wait while Mark Penn tracks down the real chief strategist.  Maybe he was on the grassy knoll.

Clinton's mistakes are not myriad or hard to identify.  They are three: she ran with a message that was out of step with the mood of the electorate, she failed to consider that she might face a genuine challenge from one of her opponents, and she dismissed a slew of states as unimportant.  All of these issues can be traced back to one source: hubris.  Clinton couldn't get the message right because she was running an "incumbent" campaign.  Who runs an incumbent campaign for an office for which you haven't even been nominated yet?  So, we end up with Clinton talking about experience, when the country is really looking for someone to just steer the ship in a new direction.  Saying you've been on deck the whole time while the captain's been slaloming through the ice bergs is probably not the best way to approach the issue.  And who was the architect of Clinton's messaging?  Why, her chief strategist and sole pollster, of course.  It's not just that Mark Penn got it wrong, it's that plenty of people in the campaign had it right, but were rebuffed:

Before her January 2007 debut as a candidate, the senator's team wrangled over how to portray her. Ms. Solis Doyle, communications director Howard Wolfson, media strategist Mandy Grunwald, policy chief Neera Tanden and senior strategist Harold Ickes wanted to promote her as a candidate of change -- the first woman president -- her Washington years notwithstanding. They also wanted to counter the candidate's high negative ratings among the general population by revealing the witty, engaging woman they knew.

Mr. Penn, by contrast, believed that voters would need to perceive Sen. Clinton as tough and seasoned enough to be the first female commander in chief. Emphasizing her gender too much, he argued, would undercut that. He also said Sen. Clinton would look weak if she apologized for her 2002 war vote, though it was especially unpopular in Iowa.

When one insider pleaded during meetings in 2007 to humanize the candidate, witnesses say Mr. Penn responded: "Being human is overrated."

Yes, when you're candidate already has an image of being a mechanical, poll driven poltician of limitless ambition (and I'm not saying it's a fair characterization), then the last thing you want to do is take some of the edge off that by "humanizing" her.  My theory is that Mark Penn undervalues the quality of being a human being -- long considered a necessity to even be eligible for public office - due to his clearly alien origins.  I mean, just look at this guy?  If he was born on Earth, then I'm the king of Spain.  That guy hatched from an egg, no two ways about it.

And not only did Sen. Clinton demonstrate poor judgment through her continued faith in Mark Penn, but she and her husband also reportedly soured quickly on the caucuses.  After losing Iowa, they responded not as most might by strengthening their efforts in caucus states, but by relinquishing those contests all together:

By last summer, when the Clinton campaign began organizing in Iowa, the volunteer-strong Obama network had already mobilized supporters statewide. Advisers say the Iowa loss hardened both Clintons against caucuses. With money getting tight and polls in caucus states discouraging, Sen. Clinton scaled back spending and appearances in places such as Idaho and Nebraska, effectively forfeiting them.

Mr. Ickes, a rules expert, had long argued against the strategy. Last June at a meeting at the Penn home, Mr. Penn suggested Sen. Clinton would get all 370 state delegates when she won California's primary, attendees say. Mr. Ickes, they say, mocked him: "The vaunted chief strategist" doesn't know that party rules aren't winner-take-all?

Lose in Iowa?  Well then just take your ball and go home.  Forget about those other nasty caucus states.  And that, in a nutshell, is how you lose an election.