Don’t call it a comeback.

After an acclaimed debate performance, the sudden disappearance of her chief Democratic rival, and a solid showing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s campaign seems to believe its summer doldrums have finally passed. And during a Friday rally in Alexandria, Virginia, they had the crowd and the fundraising numbers to prove it.

Fresh off an eleven-hour marathon of questioning from House Republicans yesterday, Clinton spoke to at least 1,500 supporters in the shadow of Alexandria’s city hall, just downriver from Washington, D.C. She was introduced by Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a longtime family friend and ally of the Clintons who is aiming to take back the state’s legislature from Republicans in next month’s statewide elections.

“You want to talk about a fighter, how about those eleven hours of testimony yesterday?!” McAuliffe crowed, the crowd cheering wildly as Clinton stood at his side. “That’s what I’m talking about! Are you kidding me?!”

“I almost want to thank her, because you saw those eleven hours of testimony,” he continued. “This is why she needs to be our commander in chief!”

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Clinton herself scrupulously avoided any mention of the Benghazi hearing, focusing instead on issues like raising the minimum wage, expanding gun control, and preserving President Obama’s policies. “People feel that, after six and a half years of hard sacrifices, America is standing again,” she said. “But we’re not running the way we should. For most people, paychecks haven’t budged in years. The minimum wage should be called what it is: a poverty wage.”

Though Benghazi didn’t factor into Clinton’s speech, her campaign seems to view her performance before the committee as an asset.

But though Benghazi didn’t factor into Clinton’s speech, her campaign seems to view her performance before the committee as an asset. “She looked extremely presidential, kept her cool,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told reporters at the rally. “Her temperament is exactly what you want to see from a future president. And I think voters will respond to that again and again.”

What about the new e-mails revealed by the committee, in which Clinton told her family and the Egyptian prime minster that the Benghazi attack was perpetrated by terrorists — even as she was claiming in public that it evolved from a spontaneous demonstration sparked by an anti-Islamic internet video?

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“The Republicans on the committee were hard-pressed yesterday to identify any new facts that they’ve uncovered in their 17 months,” Fallon tells National Review. “So yes, they might have a few more documents than previous committees had. But it doesn’t change the fundamental facts of what happened, that have already been judged by the previous eight committees that looked at this.” Clinton, he added, had herself admitted that her characterization of the attacks “careened” between a terrorist operation and a spontaneous demonstration, largely due to conflicting intelligence reports at the time.

“It’s the same fundamental conspiracy theory,” Fallon says, “and I don’t think [Republicans] did anything more to prove it based on that e-mail list.”

#share#The campaign was ebullient over the last two weeks’ fundraising haul, as well. Fallon announced that in the hour after the first Democratic debate last week, they raised more than in any other hour since Clinton first announced in April.

Clinton even touted the numbers during her speech. “You hear a lot these days about the super PACs and the billionaire mega-donors,” she said, in a not-so-subtle nod to the message of her top rival, Bernie Sanders. “But a lot of people don’t realize that my campaign is built by small donors.”

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“Over 90 percent of my donations have been $100 or less,” she boasted, before breaking news that over 500,000 people have now donated to her campaign. Fallon added that over 100,000 of those donors had given for the first time just this month.

Clinton’s Virginia supporters spoke of a palpable sense of relief after a brutal summer, during which her campaign was battered by a relentless e-mail scandal and threatened by the possibility of a Joe Biden candidacy.

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“It’s been a good couple of weeks,” says James Elliot. “I think she did well in the debate, and I think she did very well in the hearings yesterday. I think she’s actually able to master the issues and stand up against a lot of opposition. . . . I think she’s on a roll.”

“She had a wonderful day yesterday,” says Alexandria resident Marie Cataffa, who watched part of the hearings yesterday. “I think [the Benghazi controversy]’s kind of behind her. I think most people are sick of this, and will move on.”

#related#Clinton supporter Colleen Williams also thought her candidate dodged a bullet in her Benghazi testimony. “That was an opportunity for her to light her own campaign on fire, and she didn’t,” she says. “I think it cleared the air,” Williams’s friend, Abby Lacedour, agrees.

But with the FBI continuing to investigate whether the former secretary of state violated national-security law by using a private e-mail address, the two friends admitted it may be a bit premature to say Clinton is definitively out of the woods just yet.

“I dunno,” says Williams. “I mean, I don’t know what [the FBI’s] going to find.”

“That’s true, I guess they could find something,” says Lacedour. “But I don’t really think about it. I don’t. It’s not a huge thing.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.