After Her Big Win, Status Quo or Change at Clinton HQ?

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Last night–that is, at 1:30 in the morning–I ran into a top Hillary Clinton adviser at the bar in the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire. She was beaming. Earlier in the day, she had said to me, “I’m just praying the spread is 9.9 percent”–meaning she was hoping that Barack Obama would not win by double digits. Well, that was then. Joking, I said that I could imagine Clinton sending Mark Penn, her chief strategist, a telegram that said, “Stop. Come back. Stop. All is forgiven. Stop.” Her eye opened wide and she exclaimed, “Oh, I hope not.” Clinton’s narrow victory in New Hampshire, she said, was not a vindication, but a warning. “We still need to retool,” she explained. “This is not over.” Clinton would have to change plenty from here on: be more open to the media, not be so over-handled. New Hampshire, she added, had been a near-death experience for Hillary Clinton. “We need to learn from our mistakes,” she said. This aide was hoping for big changes within the Clinton campaign. Will that come? I asked. “You never know, politics can be unpredictable,” she said with a smile.

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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