Demagoguery

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- In an interview previewing a major speech she will give tomorrow at the Chicago Economic Club, Clinton said, "The economy is working really well for many people, but if you look just over the horizon and below the surface there are some troubling issues. The rich are getting richer, everybody else is marching in place" and "I don't think that's good for us."

Not true. The pool of "rich" Americans has grown as segments of the middle class moved up into it, and the middle class pool has grown as segments of the "poor" moved up into that.

What has shrunk is the pool of the impoverished.

True, the gap between the very rich and the very poor is wider than ever, because the rich have indeed gotten richer and so further away from rock bottom--but so what? Is that bad?

Is that "unfair?"

The rich are giving-- by themselves --to charitable organizations in record amounts (because they have more money and because we're a giving, compassionate people).

Furthermore, next time you hear Senator Clinton crow (any day now) about how much better "My husband's economic policies" were (like allowing oil companies to merge), keep in mind that the same gap between the very rich and very poor that she's harping about now was widening just as fast as ever--if not faster-- in the late 1990's with the Tech Bubble (a brief period of "irrational exuberance" that today is mytholigized by the hyperbolic Left as "The Greatest Most Stupendiferous Economy In The History Of The Planet...Until Bush Destroyed It!").

This part of the statement is fine: "The economy is working really well for many people..."

Indeed. "Really well," thank you very much.

But?

"...but if you look just over the horizon and below the surface there are some troubling issues."

Yes. A pessimist could find "troubling issues over the horizon and below the surface" with just about any subject at any stage of its development, including life itself.

Nothing here is perfect.

That's just rhetoric used to segue into the stoking of a little class warfare and the exploiting of the politics of envy and divisiveness in a subtle way by saying: "the rich are getting richer, everybody else is marching in place."

So there's "the rich" and..."everybody else," marginalizing the former into some corporate, greedy and anomalous--if not tyrannical-- minority who are not part of "everybody" and who are somehow responsible for the "marching in place" of the armies of the "oppressed" latter (i.e. "everybody else").

It's Robespierre and Marat stuff.

The subtext of all that is--can only be-- that the "Bush tax-cuts for the Rich" are responsible for the rich getting richer, taxes which could've been used to...

...help "everybody else" march out of poverty!

And what's with this "march" business?

Why "march?"

And where would "everybody else" march to?

Why, to war!

Against who?

The terrorists?

Heck no, silly, the real enemies to the republic, George W. Bush and the rich Republicans!

"The People vs. The Powerful!"

"Proletariats Unite!"

"To The Bastille!"

Why couldn't she just say: "Yes, the economy is working really well for many people, but we'll always have the poor among us, and we shouldn't forget them," because, indeed, "I don't think that's good for us."

She couldn't say that because every vote does indeed count in this day and age with razor-thin elections of 100 million-plus voters being decided by single-digit millions, and she has to be divisive and stir up class warfare to make sure that she keeps the demographic of "the poor"--i.e. everybody else not a rich white corporate Republican like Ken Lay-- voting for filthy rich, tax-sheltered Democrats like herself and the Kerry's.

You don't hear the Republicans endlessly harping about rich vs. poor, male vs. female, black vs. white, gay vs. straight, etc., because...

"They're "tone deaf?"

"Out of touch?"

Because they're uniters, not dividers.

It's the Democrats who try to shear away entire demographics by slandering the Republicans as "The Party of the Rich," and the "anti-Choice/anti-Female Boy's Club," and racist "Anglo-Fascists" and "Homophobes."

So who's left to support the Republican Party?

Voila: Rich, sexist, racist, homophobic white boys...

...versus "Everybody else!"

So stop marching in place and march to the polls for the mid-term elections and '08 and Hillary and the Democrats will make "everybody else" rich, too (or at least make them feel relatively--and vindictively--richer by soccing it to the rich)!

How?

How else?

Tax hikes!