Campaign letters are always at least a little comic — the faux-personal tone, the formal-informal style, the beggarliness. There are also the “artful” decisions made by the authors that are fun to explore for hidden meanings.
A recent Hillary dispatch to her supporters is a gem. Her campaign is over, the thrill of future campaign-related possibilities long past, and yet she is forced to continue asking for cash. The word “help” is plastered all over the thing, the smell of bad management rising from the text. One particularly pained passage makes the campaign seem like a shamefaced mutt who has left an unwanted deposit on the kitchen floor for the family to clean up.
“There’s something else — less endearing and I hope less enduring — that our campaign has left behind: our substantial campaign debt.”
Yuck.
There is also the decision to leave off entirely the name of the man Hillary is going to be campaigning for beginning Friday, the man now at the center of the “fight she believes in” and the “cause” she “believes deeply in” and the “next phase” of the “journey” she’s embarking on and the “cause” again she wants to advance and maybe even one of the people she wants to “advocate alongside.”
Or maybe not. The need to not offend in order to raise the cash to clean up the debt has left Hillary inarticulate. What’s the real message of this letter?