Memo from Clinton campaign to supporters: Don't panic

A memo sent by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to her supporters this week urged them to remain calm, invoking, of all past examples, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“Winning campaigns have a plan and stick to it, in good times and bad. President Obama endured significant pressure in 2007 to abandon Iowa and ultimately prevailed,” campaign manager Robby Mook wrote in the six-page memo distributed by communications director Jennifer Palmieri to “Interested Parties,” according to the document published by Vox on Wednesday.


The memo comes as Clinton faces softening polling numbers, a summer surge by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and fresh concerns about to what extent her emails contained classified information. On Tuesday, Clinton agreed to hand over her private computer server and several thumb drives containing thousands of emails to the FBI.

In the memo, distributed on Monday, Mook offers few specifics on how Clinton plans to overcome these difficulties — but uses the occasion to bash her would-be Republican rivals.

“It’s difficult to overstate how damaged the GOP brand is, as a majority of Americans view the Republican Party as out of date and out of touch. Their increasingly backwards agenda was on full display at last week’s debate,” Mook wrote, calling the party out of touch with the middle class, African Americans, Hispanics, women, LGBT Americans and millennials.

Mook pointed to four core components of Clinton’s plan, including messaging, campaign fundraising (“the right kind of resources”), data resources and organizing grassroots efforts in early primary and caucus states.

The challenges facing Clinton’s campaign, Mook wrote, come from the large field of candidates as well as the Koch brothers, “countless” super PACs and 501(c)(4)s “and an entire right wing special interest apparatus.”

“On top of that, congressional Republicans are waging a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-financed campaign against her. It has also gone on longer than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra and Hurricane Katrina,” the memo reads.