Campaign 2016: Hillary Clinton’s Fake Populism Is a Hit

But then the editorialist quietly reassures us that these speeches are all a pose, and that once in office, the candidate will revert back to being the shamelessly bought-off creature of billionaire interests he or she always has been.

So it was with Hillary this week. Just days after she came out shaking a fist to an announcement routine that transparently read like a medley of Elizabeth Warren’s greatest stump hits, the press started with their “cooler heads prevail” pieces.

“How Hillary Clinton Found Her Populist Side (And Why She’ll Have to Lose It)” declared James Kirchick of the Spectator.

Kirchick’s amusing thesis is that Hillary’s decision to harp on the income inequality thing is misplaced not only because Hillary and her husband have made more than the CEOs she’s blasting in her speeches, but because Americans actually like rich people:

Americans, unlike Europeans, do not hate the rich. We want to be them, not soak them. Perhaps the winning strategy for Hillary, then, is to quit the unconvincing pose of being one of the little guys and stop apologizing for and explaining away her wealth. That, after all, would be the American way.

Then there were the “Don’t worry, she doesn’t mean it!” pieces.

“Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Backers: We Get It,” announced Politico, which polled Democrat-leaning Wall Streeters about the anti-wealthy rhetoric and reassured us that none of them took her seriously.

It’s “just politics,” said one major Democratic donor on Wall Street, explaining that some of her Wall Street supporters doubt she would push hard for closing the carried interest loophole as president, a policy she promoted when she last ran in 2008.

Yes, back to that, the carried interest issue. Promising, and then failing, to repeal the carried interest tax break is fast becoming a Democratic tradition, so much so that I’m beginning to wonder if not fixing this problem is an intentional move, designed to ensure that Democrats always have something to run on in election seasons.

In both the 2008 and 2012 election cycles, Barack Obama either decried the tax “trick” or overtly promised to close the loophole.

Obama’s remarks about carried interest pretty much always sound exactly like Hillary’s remarks this week. He gave a Rose Garden speech in 2011, in advance of his race against Romney, in which he rejected “the notion that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare.” 

But Obama and the Democrats never really did anything about the loophole, even when they had the power to do so. And if you go back, you will find “cooler heads prevail” pieces popped up every time the president mentioned carried interest.

“Carried Interest and the Limits of Populism,” an Examiner piece from last year, was typical: it noted that the tax break “sounds” unfair, but that if you look at the details, you’ll find that such incentives are really at the core of capitalism and are what make America work, etc.