Hillary sure has become a populist these last few weeks--a conservative populist.

[DogPoundPup]

The dying days of the Hillary Clinton campaign have brought the breathtaking spectacle of a candidate lashing out at every element of public life that has nourished her career. The über-wonk has disparaged economists and expertise. The staunch ally of black America has attacked her opponent for lacking support of "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist.

Conservative populism and liberal populism are entirely different things. Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people's interest. Conservative populism, by contrast, dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as "class warfare." Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.

Consider this analysis recently offered by Bill Clinton in Clarksburg, West Virginia: "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules." This is precisely the dynamic that allows multimillionaires like George W. Bush and Bill O'Reilly to present themselves as being on the side of the little guy. A more classic expression of conservative populism cannot be found.

Continue reading at http://www.tnr.com/toc/story.html?id=64032fab-d36d-44b8-817c-6ba2f88f732d

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[DogPoundPup]

2. Take a stroll back in time...

"
"The people never have been interesting to the Clintons, not in organized, confident form. They have been interesting as election props and poll numbers, and interesting as victims, atomized, whose pain could be felt, causes championed, and misery exploited. They are interesting to Bill on rope lines, as exemplars of popular adulation and individuals to be charmed or lectured. Hillary used to hate the rope lines, hate being touched, and in the 1992 campaign she used to make sure that big men were around her to keep the plebs at bay. That changed as her ambition grew and she discovered Purell instant hand santizer. Having purelled universal health care as a live issue for a generation, she's back at it, just where she wants to be, as an answer to a murmured prayer, among a populace mobilized for nothing but elections.

Bill Clinton bribed and buttered up every member of Congress he could to pass NAFTA in 1993. The unions made speeches and phone calls and rallied here and there, but it wasn't much of a fight. they trusted their buds the Clintons. And it wasn't the only issue that labor failed to make into an energetic public case. Even as unions were being crushed by employer intimidation during representation campaigns, they didn't fight en masse for labor law reform while Clinton had a Democratic Congress, and they didn't fight, after the long night of Reaganism, for a seachange in government priorities, for an industrial policy, for reinvestment to end the bleeding of their jobs and their communities and the class. Organized labor vowed to throw out the bums who had passed NAFTA, but ended up backing most of them for re-election in 1994, and did nothing to organize globally with other losers in the aggressively pro-capital regimen of neoliberal capitalism. They had faith that the Clintons were feeling their pain and could trust them.

Organized feminists didn't fight when Clinton continued Reagan's war on "welfare queens" in more polite language. They didn't fight as women were made peon labor, displacing unionized public workers, or as they were made a captive labor force for multinationals like Tyson's chicken. Or as they were threatened with eviction from public housing. Or as they were forced into more peon labor in exchange for that public housing. Because they trusted President Bill, they're friend.

Predatory lending increased, and there was no fight. Mr. Feel your pain Bill had things under control. Household indebtedness increased, and there was no fight. Deregulation marched on, leading the way for the current foreclosure crisis among other things, and there was no fight. Hillary Clinton's closest foreign policy adviser now, Madeleine Albright, said the death of half a million children because of sanctions on Iraq was "worth it", and there was no fight. The drug war escalated on American city streets and in Colombia with the bribing and arming of government-linked paramilitaries, and there was no fight. Bill Clinton wrote anti-gay discrimination into law in the Defense of Marriage Act and there was no fight. While he had a Democratic Congress and squandered an opportunity for banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in civilian life, he won cheers from gays and their bloc vote at the ballot box for fighting for their equal opportunity to be paid killers and cannon fodder. They all trusted their guy Bill, and he would would never betray them."

[Adelante]

3. Stop spamming threads, please nt

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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[DAGDA56]

7. Thanks, I was going to do the same, but I guess I'm too soft hearted this morning...

...but after 6 of these identical posts that I'VE seen, I will join you in that alert.

[WA98296]

4. Populist? DLC is all about moving away from populist positions, making her a DINO

That's always been my position, and I'm sticking with it.

[Chulanowa]

6. As the OP points out, there's different sorts of populism

And Clinton IS displaying right-wing populist moves, primarily anti-intellectualism and accusations of elitism. She pretends to be "one of y'all po' fokes" while claiming that her opponent (which is apparently Obama, and not McCain...) is a rich, smart, BLACK BLACK BLACK snob!

[PDittie]

8. "The Populist from Chappaqua"

Earned a hundred million bucks or so after they left the White House, loaned her campaign $10 million, now wants the small donors of Barack Obama's campaign to pay her back.

That's a real passive progressive, right there.

[starroute]

9. Hillary's right-wing "populism" has strong Nazi antecedents

The Nazis denied the relevance of class warfare and presented German society as an organic whole, with all its members cheerfully working together, each knowing and accepting their proper place. Instead of battling their bosses, Germans were encouraged to turn their resentment against "parasites" -- outsiders who fed on the social organism without being a part of it -- which mainly meant Jews.

This "parasites" model later got picked up by the John Birch Society types and slightly modified in the process (emphases mine):

http://books.google.com/books?id=Md1aRhWNk1QC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=%22john+birch+society%22+parasites&source=web&ots=HnO96sGKOa&sig=rivifB3ylI0SOPyVkOtwnfGATFw&hl=en

The John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby are the two pillars of the Hard Right that evolved in the late 1950s and grew in the 1960s. Both groups blend populism, nativism, and conspiracism in the classic model of producerism. Like all producerist movements the Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby consider the "real" patriotic Americans to be hard-working people in the middle-class and working class who create goods and wealth while fighting against "parasites" at the top and bottom of society who pick their pockets.

http://www.publiceye.org/rightist/milnatbl.html

This temper tantrum is fueled by an old tenet of conspiracy theories: that the country is composed of two types of persons - parasites and producers. The parasites are at the top and the bottom; the producers are the hard-working average citizens in the middle. This analysis lies at the ideological heart of rightwing populism. The parasites at the top are seen as lazy and corrupt government officials in league with wealthy elites who control the currency and the banking sector. The parasites at the bottom are the lazy and shiftless who do not deserve the assistance they receive from society. In the current political scene, this dichotomy between parasites and producers takes on elements of racism because the people at the bottom who are seen as parasites are usually viewed as people of color, primarily black and Hispanic, even though most persons who receive government assistance are white.