Oh, Hillary!

A lot’s been made of Hillary’s gaffe about how “broke” the Clinton’s were when they left office. It was a stupid thing to say, completely tone-deaf and out of touch. We’ll probably hear about it every day between now and John Edwards defeating her in the primary (Marley bait!)

But via SULLY we see this:

Americans are famously slow to begrudge successful people their good fortune. Still, the country is getting more sensitive to the winner-take-all trends benefiting the top one percent (and top-tenth of the top one percent that the Clintons qualify for), and it will be very interesting to see how candidate Hillary Clinton reconciles her family’s fabulous wealth with her and her husband’s explicit attempt to fit their rhetoric (and the mixed economic legacy of the Clinton administration) into a more populist frame.

It’s not as if Clinton inherited millions of dollars or has Rockefeller as a last name (I was gonna say “Bush” but took the high road, you’re welcome). Yes, the Clintons have made an ungodly sum of money in the last decade, but it’s because after growing up as poor white trash without a pot to piss in Bill Clinton rose to the position of the most powerful man in the free world. And yes, with that comes the spoils of $500k speeches et al. It’s like pushing a rock up a mountain; whoever’s watching doesn’t get to decide where you started along the mountain. The Clintons started at the bottom and now they’re at the top, which should still be a great story for them. However, I have a sneaking suspicion people don't dream of ACHIEVING such things as much as happening into them, and that's why we think voting for the uber-rich will one day make us a part of the uber-rich. I’d like to know exactly what percentage of that top-tenth of 1% have made the same trek the Clintons did. I’m guessing very few.

Of course, she just shouldn’t have said it anyways. Oh well.