Boehner launches Benghazi Web site

[JDPriestly]

31. Smearing Hillary is a piece of cake.

That's one of the reasons why I think she would be a poor choice of candidate.

Hillary is speaking to corporate donors and bankers and as I understand getting paid for it.

Former Secretary of State, and presumed 2016 presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton spoke at two separate Goldman Sachs events in the past week (on October 24, and then again on October 29), for a cool $200,000 per speech, her normal fee according to Politico and the New York Times. $400,000—not a bad payday for the former First Lady.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/14/1255675/-Goldman-Sachs-Pays-Hillary-400-000-in-One-Week

In 2012, Romney spoke to a dinner of rich insiders, flattering them and dissing the rest of us. Someone taped his speech. We got to hear that tape. It was one of the things that caused Romney's defeat. (Not by any means the only one.)

Hillary has the money to run, but I don't think she has enough to silence all the bad rap she is going to get.

In the particular case of Clinton, as executive editor of The Nation Richard Kim recently argued, the idea that a figure so enmeshed in the world of the economic and political elite could adequately deliver the populist solutions the nation now so badly needs is absurd.

According to Kim's assessment, it would be "hard to imagine a Democrat of national stature more ill-equipped to speak" to the "populist mood" of the country than the former Secretary of State. He writes:

Yes, her tenure at State gave her the rehabilitating Texts From Hillary Clinton Tumblr and the thickest diplomatic passport the world has ever known, but a taste for class warfare it most certainly did not. To wit: her decision to house her post-cabinet, pre-campaign apparatus at the foundation her husband started, now rechristened the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The organization, and the related Clinton Global Initiative, carries some lofty intentions—planting trees in sub-Saharan Africa, empowering women and girls, treating HIV and malaria, and saving endangered elephants. But as Alec MacGillis captured in a devastating feature for The New Republic, it also serves as a kind of global plutocrats’ social club—a Davos on the Hudson where corporate executives pledge millions for the privilege of rubbing elbows with celebrities and world leaders.

Citing the Clinton's gold-plated rolodex—which includes "billionaires and corporate giants like Walmart, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein, Mike Bloomberg, Hollywood mogul Steve Bing and Paychex chairman Tom Golisano"—Kim acknowledged that though Hillary may not
"solicit the advice of all these folks," she will almost surely "solicit their donations."

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/31-3

The wealthy investors do not invite a speaker in order to have her insult or chastise them. But most liberal Americans feel that the wealthy in investors and bankers are taking more than their share of the country's wealth.

So, if the wealthy do not want to hear what most Americans would like to tell them, I would like to know what Hillary is telling them. Is she telling them what they want to hear or what ordinary Americans would like them to hear?

I don't think that the populist swing in the nation is going to go away very soon. The inequality is cutting too deeply into the lives of ordinary Americans. The loss of benefits for the long-term unemployed and the decrease in food stamp funding are going to hurt people. I am dubious about Hillary's judgment in courting bankers in a populist period. Occupy Wall Street set oof the populist streak, and I don't think it will end until we get some serious reform.