From yesterday, an email from the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee, an invitation to a Chris Van Hollen email phrased in the first person plural “Please join us. . .”
Eyebrows up - as I suspect anyone reading this would know, the Democratic Party, by rule, stays out of primary fights and doesn’t endorse candidates or host events or fundraisers. Plus, the inclusion of the specific donation levels and the FEC disclosure language suggested, implicitly, that this was an invitation from the MCDCC itself.
Today comes the correction - a disclaimer that apparently got left off yesterday’s email.
Now pretty clearly, this was a mistake, and an unintentional one. Actually, two mistakes. First, a Van Hollen invite got copied verbatim, and it shouldn’t have. As a result, the word “us” was used in a context in which the idea that the invitation was from the MCDCC itself was clearly present. Second, and compounding the first error, a disclaimer got left off the email, and it shouldn’t have.
But these are the kinds of mistakes that shouldn’t be made. Innocent or not, they provide too much fodder for conspiracy theorists who always want to believe that the fix is in. They also make the Democratic Party look bad - and that’s not good.