This weekend we learned that not only does Hillary think that half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable, she also thinks “half” of Bernie supporters are idealistic and young, which is just another way of saying naïve and stupid.
At a fundraiser in February 2016, she claims that young supporters of Bernie Sanders want a healthcare system like what Sweden has but “they don’t know what that means.” Here is the full quote:
It is important to recognize what’s going on in this election. Everybody who’s ever been in an election that I’m aware of is quite bewildered because there is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates. And on the other side, there’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel.… Because it is difficult when you’re running to be president, and you understand how hard the job is — I don’t want to overpromise. I don’t want to tell people things that I know we cannot do.
It’s amazing that Hillary mentions free college as an example of what isn’t realistic, given that she actually proposes a plan on her website whereby most every student at a public four-year college and university, or a community college, will enjoy a free education. Clearly, Bernie forced her to go further left in the primary, but it is also clear from her remarks that she has no intention of keeping these idealistic promises.
She would go on to say that many of Bernie’s supporters are “living in their parent’s basement.” She then provides as example of millennials who are pessimistic about their future:
I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, “You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don’t believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.” So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so if you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing.
Hillary’s solution to this problem is to offer them nothing but her contempt:
We should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism.… But those of us who understand this, who’ve been experienced, who’ve worked in it know that it’s a false promise. But I don’t think you tell idealistic people, particularly young people that they’ve bought into a false promise.
If you can bear to listen to the full speech, here is the link.
This recording nicely demonstrates her hypocrisy and cynicism. Most importantly, it insults a majority of Sanders supporters, which should be a big deal to them. She may as well have called Bernie Sanders’ views deplorable. As she put it, “his ideas are indefensible. The amount of taxes that would be raised on middle class families is quite significant. You know he talks a lot about we need to be like Scandinavia. And okay, Denmark, the tax rate for middle class families is 55 percent with a 25 percent value added tax on top of it.”
If the Millennials had contributed to Hillary’s campaign what the banks were paying the Clintons in speaking fees, she probably would have given a very different speech. I suspect Sanders’ voters know as much, but a free refresher course never hurt anyone. So here are some numbers about just how good the big banks have been to Hillary.
From April 2013 to March 2015, Hillary Clinton earned $21.648 million in speaking fees for 92 speeches. From February 2001 to May 2015, Bill Clinton earned $132 million from giving 637 speeches.
From the big banks alone, Bill and Hillary gave a combined 39 speeches and were paid $7.7 million. Hillary only gave 8 of those speeches and was paid $1.8 million. In 2013, Goldman Sachs paid her for three speeches (06/04/2013, 10/24/2013, and 10/29/2013) for $225,000 each.
Hillary was paid $225,000 per speech to UBS (07/11/2013), Morgan Stanley (04/18/2013) and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (11/13/2013).
Deutsche Bank paid her for two speeches. Hillary got paid $225,000 (04/24/2013) for the first speech and $260,000 (10/07/2014) for the second.
In 2014, Bill Clinton was paid $270,000 (08/27/2014) from Deutsche Bank and $500,000 (03/06/2014) from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
In 2016, more Americans ages 18-34 were living at home (32.1 percent) than living with a spouse or partner (31.1 percent). Young people are not living in their parents’ basement because they are lazy. It’s because they have high student debts and they are living in the worst economic recovery since the Second World War. Sadly, Hillary wants to continue this administration’s policies. Can anyone really afford her?
