Middle Class Express: The Swag

Hillary gave a very substantive policy speech this morning, and by "substantive," I mean "it contained a lot of numbers." No, seriously, it was the economic cornerstone upon which she is mounting her "Rebuilding the Road to the Middle Class" tour of Iowa (untangle those metaphors at your own risk). She laid out some goals that would shore up the "shrunken safety net" for working Americans: help paying for college, jobs, aid to those in "unworkable mortgages," and several shout-outs to unions. Pat Healy has a quick reax here; I'll be writing a story on the trip tomorrow. But, speaking of economics, if anyone is wondering how a campaign with $60m spends its money, the answers were waiting for us on the press bus:

Which contained this:

and this:

and an unsharpened pencil. Find more metaphors, if you dare...

UPDATE: I should point out that for all its substance, there wasn't much new in her speech. Instead, she framed some already-announced proposals around the idea of the "middle class." The campaign's release is here. She did have a section that talked about how NAFTA hasn't worked, which may be the first time she's spelled that out specifically. (That's not in the release.)

UPDATE: Asks Rocky: "Ana, what's your point? Are such T-shirts and cheap souvenirs unique to Clinton's campaign? Is there some unusual characteristic about the items in the photographs? What, exactly, is the story here?"

As far as I know, Hillary's the only candidate to have supplied her press detail with t-shirts thus far, and such luxuries do suggests that the campaign has, literally, more money than it knows what to with. The real story here, however, is that the "Ethnic Food" section of the "License to Cook: Iowa Style" cookbook has a recipe for "English Fruitcake."