Fwd: pls read asap -- the JP bits -- don't share

From:jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com To: ha16@hillaryclinton.com, robbymook2015@gmail.com, john.podesta@gmail.com, kristinakschake@gmail.com Date: 2015-04-17 17:55 Subject: Fwd: pls read asap -- the JP bits -- don't share

Glenn Thrush is doing a story about how well launch went and some part of it will be about me - which I hate. He did me courtesy of sending what he is going to say about me. Seems fine. Just didn't want folks to think I went looking for this! Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: Glenn Thrush <gthrush@politico.com> > Date: April 17, 2015 at 2:20:48 PM EDT > To: "jennifer. palmieri" <jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com> > Subject: pls read asap -- the JP bits -- don't share > > Merci > > In truth, the new press strategy isn’t really a press strategy at all – it’s more of a campaign management strategy, an inward-focused attempt to steer staff, the candidate, and her family away from time-wasting, enervating scraps with the media. All of the top campaign staff (especially Campaign Manager Robbie Mook) are on board with this idea, but several Clinton aides told me the key architect is the campaign’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri, a close ally of campaign chairman John Podesta. > > Palmieri’s mantra around Clinton’s scantly-furnished Brooklyn office has been “Let’s not build our campaign around the media” – as opposed to last time when it was “a campaign wrapped around a war room,” according to a 2008 survivor. > > Palmieri knows from war – she’s arguably the most battle-tested communications operative in the Democratic Party today: She started off as a low-level aide for Bill Clinton’s White House in 1993, worked her way up the ladder to the chief of staff’s office, served as a senior adviser to John Edwards during his cataclysmic 2008 campaign -- she grew apart from the philandering candidate and became close friends with Edwards’ cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth. Until last month, Palmieri served as President Obama’s communications director – where she was tasked with managing the fallout over the rollout of Obamacare. > > All of these fights have given Palmieri – who decorates her office with soothing religious art -- a reputation for resilience and a knack for navigating the treacherous internal crosscurrents of the White House and presidential campaigns with a self-effacing shrug. Palmieri (who laughed off as request to participate in this story) enjoys a good relationship with reporters, but she also has a strong sense of boundaries, and will accommodate them only when it benefits her boss. > > Less than a week in, the campaign’s day-to-day discipline mirrors Palmieri’s personal style. In 2008, there was a wholesale ban on “process” stories –- the behind-the-scenes anecdote-crammed tales that are the lifeblood of political reporting in POLITICO and elsewhere – but Palmieri has instructed her staff to cooperate, whenever practical. Her goal isn’t necessarily to reveal the inner workings of the campaign but to “demystify” them a bit, according to an aide, so that reporters don’t interpret every move Clinton makes as part of some vast behind-closed-doors conspiracy. > > There’s also a conscious attempt to humanize Clinton’s staff to counter perceptions, promoted in the conservative and mainstream media, that she surrounds herself with sharp-elbowed political mercenaries enlisted in a dark quest for power. “She is surrounding herself with scrappy, battle-tested operatives and advisers who work hard and run campaigns like they're 10 points behind, even if they aren't,” read one of the campaign-generated memos issued to Clinton’s media surrogates, sent to me by a senior Democrat. > > …..That was made manifestly clear in Iowa. Reporters weren’t told about her van trek until it had already started, and when they arrived Clinton waved off tough questions about her recent conversion to the cause of gay marriage; Then her campaign released a carefully edited video of a voter thanking her for backing same-sex marriage at a Council Bluffs roundtable that had been closed to press. > > When NBC’s Andrea Mitchell confronted Palmieri about the candidate’s unwillingness to answer reporters’ questions about gay marriage in Iowa, the communications director gave little ground, prompting some reporters to remark how little things had changed since the last campaign. > -- > Glenn Thrush > Chief Political Correspondent, POLITICO > Senior Staff Writer, POLITICO Magazine > Cell (call first): 202-731-4974 > Desk: 703-647-8543 > http://www.politico.com/reporters/GlennThrush.html