The Weekly Standard

A miniflap recently broke out over a Politico item about a July 9 memo to “Interested Parties” from Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist. Penn’s memo was definitely designed to foster an impression of growing Clinton strength. Politico’s Ben Smith went a step farther in his characterization of the memo, however, saying it implied a Clinton victory was “inevitable.” Penn and Co. disavowed that characterization, and Smith subsequently took out the quotation marks he’d put around “inevitable” in his original post. Thus did the Clinton campaign find itself in the enviable position of having established its humility while pressing the immodest line that the candidate’s “electoral strength has grown in the last quarter and she is better positioned today than ever before to become the next President of the United States.”

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