By Rick Pearson
More than $20 million in the hole and finding reluctance among Sen. Barack Obama's supporters to help retire her campaign debt, Sen. Hillary Clinton urged her backers to help her out by buying a t-shirt.
Not just any t-shirt. A $50 "limited edition" t-shirt, the winner in a contest launched in May when Clinton was still very much an active candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency against Obama.
"While the primary race may be over, I think the winning t-shirt -- and it won by a landslide -- still makes a wonderful statement about everything you and I accomplished in this historic race and our determination to keep fighting for what we believe in," Clinton wrote supporters in an e-mail today.
"If you contribute $50 today you'll get a t-shirt with the winning design and continue to help me pay down our campaign debt," she wrote, thanking "Denitza of Weehawken, New Jersey" for submitting the best of 125,000 entries.
The t-shirts with white lettering are available in a variety of sizes, up to XXXL--appropriate for an oversize campaign debt.
On the black shirts, a white profile of the pants-suited New York senator appears along with words echoing a refrain from her unsuccessful campaign:
"For everyone who's ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you!"
Clinton's pitch comes after a variety of New York-based news outlets reported that during a joint appearance in Manhattan last night by Obama and Clinton, the Illinois senator was forced to interrupt the event's closing music and hastily rush back on stage because he forgot to make a pitch to help retire the New York senator's debt.
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Comments
Those are terrible shirts. Just the last line--"This one's for you"--and the Hillary silhouette would have gotten the point across just fine, and been a lot punchier. With this one, by the time you finish reading it, you've forgotten what it said at the beginning. Too, too wordy.
Posted by: Dave Coulter | July 10, 2008 1:48 PM
Poor Hillary, won't you please give your hard earned income to her. After all she's running low on funds, she is down to her last 100 million.
Posted by: paul | July 10, 2008 2:16 PM
Probably get $$$ more out of the T shirt than Obama's suport-
Posted by: George | July 10, 2008 2:26 PM
How about this: "Hillary went $23M in debt to become president and all I got was this stupid T-shirt."
Posted by: minnie | July 10, 2008 2:44 PM
I'll buy a couple of T-Shirts that say:
OBAMA: "IT IS NOW TIME FOR A FLIP OR A FLOP?
Posted by: Hillary2008 | July 10, 2008 3:05 PM
Re: the above, I think they probably want the shirt to make sense and be grammatically correct.
Posted by: JeffM | July 10, 2008 3:24 PM
Hillary Making Nice with Barack
Hillary Clinton's speech before 'Women for Obama' platform in Manhattan this morning was a far cry from her campaign speeches. Gone is the aggressive, condescending and sharp mention of Obama. Her tone, tenor and body language today was very pleasant and personable and for the first time her praise for Obama seemed genuine and sincere.
The Woman for Obama group is presumably the former 'Women for Hillary' group so she was addressing her former constituency but really put a serious effort to support Obama. While some of the funds raised at such gatherings are going towards retiring her campaign debts, but her speech appeared above such considerations.
Is Hillary finally making a serious effort to be considered a running mate? Her speech certainly had the hallmark of a wannabe running mate than a wannabe President. With Jim Webb out of the Veep stakes, the field is narrowing and she may have just improved her chances. The success of such a ticket however is still in question. Will the Southern Whites vote for a ticket that has an African American and a Woman on it or will they scoot towards McCain?
Posted by: Ajaz | July 10, 2008 4:06 PM
Gee, had I known about the T-shirt contest, I would have submitted the following
"With all Americans behind me, I will be up front with Bill -
"Sorry, you're not the President any more, I AM!"
Posted by: the truth | July 10, 2008 4:26 PM
For $50, it should be something more like: "I just paid for one of Mark Penn's lunches and all I got was this stupid t-shirt"
Posted by: PatGund | July 10, 2008 6:40 PM
Gee, all I got for my $50 bucks was this lousy T-Shirt.
VJ Machiavelli
ps Iran-Have Missiles Will Fire, see video
http://www.vjmachiavelli.blogspot.com
Posted by: VJ Machiavelli | July 11, 2008 1:20 AM