Speaking for me only
In Indianapolis on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton told voters she was “taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America.”
“Senator Obama’s remarks are elitist and they are out of touch,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience. “They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know.”
The Clintons’ income over the eight-year period was more than $109 million. They paid nearly $34 million in taxes over the period, 31% of their income, and contributed about $10 millon to charity.
Former president Bill Clinton’s speeches brought in nearly $52 million and his books nearly $30 million. Hillary Clinton’s book Living History earned her $10.3 million.
Hillary Clinton, working stiff.
TR
I never understood why Republicans hated the Clintons so much. I think I get it now — they see their own evil reflection in them.
DougJ
Keep hammering way on this.
PaulB
I think Obama has the right idea in his response:
“I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser and somebody asked how’re you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What’s going on there? We hear that’s its hard for some working class people to get behind you’re campaign. I said, “Well look, they’re frustrated and for good reason. Because for the last 25 years they’ve seen jobs shipped overseas. They’ve seen their economies collapse. They have lost their jobs. They have lost their pensions. They have lost their healthcare.
“And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we’re going to make your community better. We’re going to make it right and nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington. So I made this statement– so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’
“Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain—it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I’m out of touch? No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania. I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.”
vwcat
The Clintons are going to try to milk this and make it an issue. The only ones who are biting are the republicans and Hillary’s supporters.
Those in the midwest know Obama is speaking the truth. And I believe this will bite the clintons in their 109 million dollar asses.
Regardless of what Hillary says, she is still a backer of free trade.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-trade12apr12,1,2301897.story
rmp
Are we sure Mark Penn is gone? This seems to be a loser of an argument.
Hillary should focus on McCain and the republicans and why she is better than them. Attacking Barack plays to his advantage. She’s old school and only knows the politics of attack.
Incertus
You know, I said this here when Michael tried to make the same point, only more snarkily. This comparison doesn’t work. A wealthy person with empathy and a bit of knowledge can understand the plight of the working person. It is possible. Just because the Clintons made made two fuckloads of money in the last 10 years, that doesn’t negate the possibility that they do understand the plight of working families, not that alone at least.
There is an argument to be made that Hillary Clinton is out of touch, and is more of a friend to corporations than Obama is, but the fact that she made a lot of money isn’t that argument.
leinie
“Demeaning remarks?”
WTF did the MUP say that was demeaning?
He said that people who have been shit on for 25-30 years don’t believe the shitters when they say they won’t shit on them again.
I don’t think that is “elitist” or demeaning.
What is it John said? Yeah. Fuck you, Hillary, if ya think we are all that stupid. THAT is demeaning, when you treat us like we can’t tell the difference.
Conservatively Liberal
I think this might come back to bite Clinton in the ass. She is only drawing attention to his actual words, IMO. People are going to be pissed enough that they are going to want to read the exact quote (to feed their outrage properly), and when they read them they are going to go ‘WTF?! Obama is right!’.
Politics of the 90’s is the game they are playing, but the internet may be their undoing. I think 2004 was a notice to the left that they better get good at countering the crap from the right. 2006 showed that the left was getting a handle on the MSM (or Traditional Media, as Kos likes to call them) and correcting them via the internet.
The MSM/TM used to completely control the flow of information. Not any more. Hillary is running as if they have complete control of the message, and it just makes her look inept. Obama’s people are on top of things and their responses have been phenomenal, to say the very least. They are using the internet to their advantage, and it is paying off big time. I expect that the internet will eventually replace the MSM/TM, rendering them irrelevant when that happens. The MSM/TM better figure out that they are on the downswing now, and if they can’t do a better job than the National Enquirer then they are going to become just as popular one day.
Hillary is issuing decrees and expecting things to go her way, and Obama is out there working hard to earn our votes. I know an elitist when I see one, and Hillary and Bill are a pair of them.
John Cole
What kind of bullshit is that? Is that nuance or something? We are playing by the Clinton rules now- thinking is out the window, flyby smears rule the day. By Clinton rules, she made a lot of money, so she is an elitist. Period.
Fuck her.
Conservatively Liberal
OT, but I heard that Larry Johnson lost his web host for No Quarter. Seems he was cut off and his host would not respond to him, so he had to move to another host.
It is all Obama’s fault, but good friends like Taylor Marsh and some other unknowns helped to save the day (all of this according to a post at Hillaryis44).
Its a conspiracy!
Wilfred
Piss off, Cole. You’re one of the assholes who said repeatedly that you’d vote for her NO MATTER WHAT, and now you’re complaining when she cashes in on the blank check she was given? Lame.
John Cole
Not anymore. I already left one corrupt, pathologically dishonest party full of dissemblers in the last year. I will have no problem garroting Hillary and dealing with the fall-out if this bullshit continues.
Zifnab
Eh. She’s playing the “how dare you talk about poor people being poor” card. Her income has nothing to do with it. Admittedly, she’s pulling from the GOP play book. We’ve been hearing for years now how mega-corps and millionaires deserve giant tax credits, but the little guy is just a social parasite for using SCHIP or government assistance. This revolves around the old GOP talking point – that only social parasites complain and that, by extension, when Obama notes Pennsylvanians who feel “bitter” he’s really just calling Pennsylvanians a bunch of wanna-be welfare queens who can’t make it on their own.
That’s the crux of the issue. It has nothing to do with a candidate’s bank account.
This doesn’t make her line of attack any more valid. I’m just saying that Barack’s “elitism” isn’t an attack on his net worth. It’s an attack on him for telling Pennsylvanians that they might need government help.
cleek
yeah John, shame on you for not averting your eyes while Hillary tries to destroy the presumptive nominee with her shit-through-a-firehose campaign. if she wants to encrust the country with a six-inch layer of shit, it’s her prerogative – and if you don’t like it, you’d better STFU and look away, because goddamnit, the presidency is Her Fucking Right and she’s going to do what it takes, even if it means alienating half the electorate.
and furthermore don’t you know that once you make a pledge to Hillary, you’re required to honor that pledge come hell or high water ? ask Bill Richardson!
Wilfred is only trying to help.
TR
Very good.
But he should have also mentioned the eight homes McCain owns along with his rich heiress second wife.
TR
Well, I said that too about a month ago. So did a lot of people. Hillary seemed to take that as a blood oath and decided to see how fucking far she could push it.
I swore I’d love, honor and obey my wife ’til death do us part. But if I were to catch her fucking the entire Denver Broncos squad, I’d probably backtrack on that promise too.
John Cole
Leave Wilfred alone. For months he has been warning that our pledges to support Hillary would lead to this, and he was right.
Wilfred
That reminds me of Garry Shandling’s line about why he broke up with girlfriend: “She moved in with another guy – I draw the line at that”.
Where’s the line? For me it came when she suggested McCain was better than Obama in terms of experience. maybe she’ll ahve to become McCain’s running mate to make people punt – as in punt the…
Robby-D
OMG, this scares the hell out of me; I’d suspect her ambition might lead her to this, and it’d be a very difficult ticket to beat.
By the way, I love the new, angrier John Cole… makes me feel that my frustration and anger towards HRC’s campaign strategy and the MSM is echoed by at least a few others.
Thinking of what she’s doing, it’s exactly what’s needed to bring down McCain. He’s too much the media darling, there needs to be outrage after outrage after outrage. If only she directed some of this energy at him, instead of Obama, she’d be a uniter instead of a divider and I might actually respect her, even go back to liking her. Even if she was leading the primary in some non-made-up metric, it could be somewhat justified, but all she’s doing is DESTROYING THE WRONG PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.
I echo John’s sentiment. STFU Hillary, your presidential candidacy is done; we still want and need you – to support the will of the democratic electorate – and you can serve yourself, your party, and your country MUCH better by going back to being a (mostly) democratic senator and attacking those that absolutely need to be beaten come November, not the one person who could actually affect the change that is so needed in the USA right now.
Susan Kitchens
Clinton:
My interpretation:
Sound bites are no good unless they’re Bill’s sound bites. His speeches are good; he earned $52,000,000 over the last several years giving speeches. Now that’s a sound solution! My Bill, he matches his word with action, all right.
So vote for me! I deserve it!
. . . . . .
Incidentally, while searching for Clinton quotes re: Obama’s speechifying (must. put down. speechifying), I encountered this: For Clinton, it’s all in the meta-narrative.
By obvious, it means that Hillary’s Presidency is inevitable and a foregone conclusion and she doesn’t even need to make the case for it.
D-Chance.
I just KNEW this was all the fault of the Jews…
D-Chance.
Let the swiftboating begin… PURPORTED Vietnam vet (and I bet they can find a “band of brothers” who will testify that he really didn’t suffer as much as he claims) who married into wealth. There’s your Democrat playbook for the 2008 general election… use the Republican 2004 playbook to smear a war hero and his wife. After 4 years of bitching and moaning about how unfair and how evil and how awful it was, they’re going to do the exact same thing and claim “politics is politics” and “they did it first!”.
PeterJ
Regarding McCain and Vietnam, read this.
BTW, that’s a conservative newspaper…
Bill Delyon
‘OT, but I heard that Larry Johnson lost his web host for No Quarter. Seems he was cut off and his host would not respond to him, so he had to move to another host.’
Yeah, I hadn’t ventured over there for a couple months, stopped by last night and saw the ‘No Quarter was SHUT DOWN’ post. It really is all a conspiracy. The comments under that post were astounding. I had no idea that site had turned into a ‘Hate Obama’ web site.
Scary shit in there…
Yikes!
Bill Delyon
Oh and I checked back in there today to see what the clintonista has to say about a post or two I’d left.
Course the #1 post/story was about Obama being a “elitist”, and how this was his get this, “Macaca” moment…
Mercy…..
The Other Steve
I think McCain has a bit from asperger’s syndrome. This would explain his lack of personality, anger and frustration and so on. I have the same thing, and I don’t know how to thank people.