Reprinted from Smirking Chimp
The revealing headline: "Hillary Clinton Will Run; She Still Has to Explain Why."
The money quote from the story beneath that headline: "For months, Mrs. Clinton has lamented the stagnant wages holding back lower-income people and the concentration of wealth among a sliver of the wealthiest, a sentiment echoed in her first public remarks as a 2016 candidate."
Linger on that sentence's introductory phrase: "For months."
Months?
!
What?
Hillary has been a political animal for decades. She's been a possible future presidential candidate since at least 1996 -- the year she last drove a car. She's just getting around to figuring out what her politics are?
(By the way and speaking of which, someone in Hillaryworld needs to clue in She-Who-Must-Be-Driven to basic automotive vernacular. When one is a passenger, one does not say, as Secretary Clinton did yesterday, "when I was driving here." Driving is something one does, not something that is done to you. Unless you are actually, you know, driving, the correct phrase would be: "when I was riding here." Unless, of course, this is one of those misremembering "dodging sniper fire" senior moments.)
Maybe I took high school civics class too seriously, but I thought the correct order was:
First, come up with list of ideas, policies, and bills that you would, as President of the United States, promote, enact and propose.
Second, run for President of the United States.
This, however, is no longer how a professional political class so removed from the lives of the average citizen that they not only don't drive but don't even know words about driving -- who think being worth $25 million equals "dead broke," and that earning $12 million a year makes you "not truly well off" -- sees it. First, they fundraise. Second, they run. Third, they figure out what they believe in.
With a campaign war chest likely to set new records, the task of selling influence in a 2017-2021 first term is well underway. Unless she dies or gets hosed by a new scandal, Hillary has the Democratic nomination all sewn up. Which means it's time for the last priority: ginning up a platform.
At this writing, Clinton says she wants to be a "champion" for "everyday Americans." What does that phrase even mean? As opposed to what -- Americans who live outside the standard Sunday-to-Saturday space-time continuum? Is there some special eighth-and-a-halfth day for one percenters?
There are, she told Iowans, "four big fights that I think we have to take on."
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