From the “what-took-you-so-long?” dept:

Hillary Clinton’s top campaign strategist has resigned. We’ll actually, it appears that he was shown the door. Now, if I were Barack Obama, specifically, I would have a field day with this one. In a moment, I think you’ll understand why.

Often, Obama rails against the influence of lobbyists in Washington. Well, lo and behold, his opponent’s chief strategist, as it turns out, is also the chief executive of the Burson-Marstellar lobbying firm. In this capacity, he met with the Colombia ambassador to the U.S. on Monday. The Colombian government has been using the services of his firm for several months in efforts to get a trade deal pushed through Congress.

The problem? Hillary Clinton is opposed to this trade deal.

So, follow me here — Clinton is against the agreement but, the chief strategist of her campaign is a lobbyist whose firm is on the other side of the issue and Penn didn’t even have the good sense to, at least, not be personally involved in the deal.

For his part, Penn called his involvement in this meeting, “an error in judgement.”

Who knows why the campaign dragged its feet for a few days before letting him go but, make no mistake, this is a very bad thing to happen as the Pennsylvania and North Carolina vote looms. I still don’t expect this affect Clinton much in the polls in Pennsylvania but, in later contests this is going to be a problem. You can’t set yourself up as a champion of the little guy when you have a fat-cat lobbyist running your campaign and, for all you know, using his association with you, either explicitly or implied, to show these clients that he has an inside track into what could be the next Presidential administration.

Finally, in a bit irony, not only is Penn on the outs with the Clinton campaign but, also, his lobbying firm was fired by the Colombian government. It appears that the Colombians were offended that Penn would refer to his dealings with them as an “error in judgement.”

Well, I’ll be interested to see just how all this plays out.

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