Plutocrat Or Populist? Actually, Hillary Clinton Is Neither (Joe Conason)

[Algernon Moncrieff]

14. K & R

During her Senate career and then as a Democratic presidential candidate, Clinton told everyone who would listen what she thought about questions of fairness, inequality and growth that remain central today. She dismissed the idea that higher minimum wages damage growth and employment; she demanded restoration of the traditional balance between government and markets, which had tipped too much toward corporate power; she blasted the Bush administration's cuts in assistance to the poor and unemployed; and she urged, above all, that the forces destroying the middle class must be restrained and ultimately reversed.

Whatever her connections with the wealthy and well-connected, Clinton doesn't seem terribly impressed. "With all due respect, rich people did not make America great," she said in 2006. "Every society throughout history has had the rich and the poor. It was America's destiny to create something new, a middle class that provided upward mobility for the poor and opportunity for the many. Our strength, our economy, our values derive from the promise of America, the promise of lifting yourself up through hard work in a society that rewards results." In her presidential campaign, she called for a "21st-century progressivism" in the trust-busting, labor-friendly style of Theodore Roosevelt.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/actually-hillary-clinton-neither-plutocrat-nor-populist