Mark Penn Just Handed Hasan Piker's Enemies a Bigger Sword

Mark Penn just made Hasan Piker more powerful, and he did it on purpose thinking the opposite.

The veteran Democratic pollster and professional vibes-reader appeared on the airwaves September 26 to deliver his verdict: the movement Piker represents is, according to Penn, "not an anti-Israel movement, it is an anti-America movement." He said it like it was a finishing move.

Darlings, have we learned nothing.

Piker's entire brand is built on the proposition that America should be criticized, loudly, by someone who lives here and refuses to leave. He has called the U.S. worse than al-Qaeda pound for pound. He has allegedly led "river to the sea" chants at Cornell. He compared himself to Rush Limbaugh, and not as an insult. When Mark Penn goes on television and says this man is "anti-America," Piker's audience does not recoil. They clip it. They repost it. They add rocket emojis.

Penn's framing is the establishment doing what the establishment does: it reaches for the scariest-sounding label in the drawer and slaps it on the thing it cannot explain. The NRSC sent a formal thank-you to Piker this week. Ted Cruz called him dangerous. Netanyahu said his name at the United Nations. The United Nations. And now a Clinton-era pollster is on cable news rebranding the whole operation as an anti-America movement. Every single one of these moments is content Piker would have paid for.

And if this feels familiar, it's because the Rush Limbaugh comparison Piker himself floated is not as crazy as everyone pretended. Limbaugh grew by being named as the enemy. The more respectable people lined up to denounce him, the more his people loved him. Penn is not countering Piker. Penn is auditioning to be Piker's next hype man, accidentally.

The actual danger to Piker has never been the Mark Penns of the world. It's the Symone Sanders-Townsends, who sat him down and asked, plainly, when has any of this actually elected anybody. That question has no good clip attached to it. That question does not go viral with rocket emojis.

We wish Mark Penn strength in this trying time of his own making, my loves. The reframe is a gift. Piker will accept it with both hands.