Mark Penn is a veteran pollster and political strategist. Mark Penn has a plan.

According to Penn, in a coauthored New York Times op-ed yesterday entitled “Back to the Center, Democrats,” the party’s only pathway back to political relevancy is “to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party.” Apparently, a candidate who said one of the Democrats’ most cherished and long-held policy goals will “never, ever come to pass,” racked up the endorsement of a long list of GOP neocons, and got beaten by a guy who made his opposition to a widely hated free-trade deal that she helped create a regular part of his stump speech was too left-wing. Go figure.

Penn’s advice may not make any sense, but the fact that he’s the one giving it does: Penn’s chief claim to fame is as the architect of Bill Clinton’s mid-nineties move to the center.