Hillary, the Middle-Class Warrior? [Updated]

Hillary Clinton has said that she will make income inequality the central theme of her campaign, and will position herself as an advocate for the middle class. No doubt such pretensions will be taken seriously by our news media. Reporters and mainstream commentators might ridicule the idea that a woman who hasn’t driven her own automobile in twenty years, charges $300,000 to give a below-average speech, and shakes down foreign governments for cash, has much insight into the problems of the average American, but they won’t. Michael Ramirez comments; click to enlarge:

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I suppose Bill and Hillary think they can get away with it because there is a tradition of rich politicians defending the interests of the less fortunate. In the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt is probably the paradigm. But I am not so sure today’s electorate is into noblesse oblige. If the Republicans don’t do something stupid, like nominating Jeb Bush, their candidate–Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry–will be an actual member of the middle class. That concept will appeal to a lot of voters, I think.

UPDATE: John Podhoretz has more on the same theme:

[Hillary] has spent the last 15 years as a voice of liberal corporatism, not of Occupy Wall Street.

Before moving to the White House, Hillary Clinton was very much a creature of the upper middle class — a successful lawyer married to a politician who made $35,000 a year.

Since then, she has literally transcended class. It’s likely she has not driven a car in 23 years, or carried a bag. Her commercial flight back from Iowa last week is almost certainly one of the very few commercial flights she has taken since 1992.

Her husband has earned at least $150 million since 2001. Between a book deal and speeches, she has made something like $20 million since leaving Foggy Bottom in 2013. So whom exactly is Hillary Clinton going to lead the revolution against? Herself?

She might as well have called herself “severely left-wing.” She might as well have called for her own “self-toppling.”

Her sheer inauthenticity is astonishing. And if she continues to speak in ways that surely set off even the most hardened liberal’s bull detector, she is not going to be the president of the United States.

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