Letters to the Editor
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Coming or going?
What I would really like to know is whether this is the last gasp of the now-fired campaign leadership, or the first example of what the new people are capable of. The answer to that would tell everything about the future of Clinton's campaign.
It's not that the ad is particularly weak. (And it's a good sign that she can still do attack ads with the right kind of light touch — a tendency to get stabby is one of Clinton's major political failure modes.) It's just that an ad like this is not what she needs to be putting out in order to get competitive again.
If that's because it was produced by a staff with poor morale and a leadership that was heading out the door, that's one thing.
But if it's the best, hardest-hitting message that the new campaign management can put forward, then it's a sign that the campaign, from the top down, has run out of ideas and is only trying to stay enough in the game to have a credible shot at a delegatory upset at the convention, which isn't a promising endgame for anyone involved.
What she needs is to be getting out a message that startles viewers with a new Hillary Clinton that they haven't seen before, the way she did in her public appearances in the early campaign, or even as far back as her "Sopranos" ad with her husband.
Being able to accomplish something like that while you're bleeding votes and the wolves are circling around and your own people are probably contemplating mutiny is by no means easy. Clinton doesn't seem to command the kind of personal loyalty that