During the 2012 Presidential campaign, Democrats received a gift from God when a secret video of Mitt Romney emerged.
Set in a Gatsby-like dining room, the video showed an unfiltered Romney letting down his guard to a room full of rich Republican donors.
"There are 47% of the people who will vote for [Obama] no matter what," Romney said. "Who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims... these are people who pay no income tax... and so my job is not to worry about these people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
The "47% video," as it came to be known, was such a game-changer because it validated all the Democrat attack lines on Romney- rich, out of touch, hostile to the poor, etc.
Romney was never able to recover from the video and, as we know, the rest is history: Barack Obama was re-elected to a second term and the Republicans suffered their second consecutive presidential defeat.
While Hillary Clinton is certainly no Mitt Romney, she is creating a similarly destructive image of herself. Simply put- she has a wealth problem.
SELF INFLICTED WOUNDS
Hillary's wealth problem started earlier this summer when she told ABC that Bill and herself were "not only dead broke, but in debt" when they left the White House.
What Hillary failed to mention is that, while the two did indeed have debts due to a mountain of unpaid legal fees, they also had millions of dollars in assets, including two homes in New York and DC.
The "dead broke" comment is also laughable because it's common knowledge that presidents are all but guaranteed a colossal amount of wealth once they leave office. This comes in the form of book sales, royalties, speaking fees, endorsements and high-paying positions at universities and consulting firms.
As Ohio State University Business Professor Jeffrey Hoopes put it, "Almost any president leaving office can expect tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in future earnings as a result of their having been president."
If hearing a one-percenter shamelessly exaggerate their past "debts" wasn't infuriating enough, just weeks later Hillary committed another similar unforced error.
When asked by The Guardian if her vast family wealth would make her unfit to speak about income inequality, Hillary said "They don't see me as part of the problem, because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off."
In many ways, this comment is even worse than the "dead broke" one.
First off, no average American calls taxes "ordinary." To them, they aren't ordinary- they are the only kind there is. Regular people do not have Swiss bank accounts and tax havens in the Cayman Islands. They have no knowledge of the "unordinary" taxes that the super rich have access to. The fact that Hillary refers to her taxes as "ordinary" shows how out of touch she is with everyday Americans.
Next, she seems to allude to the fact that her massive wealth, despite being valued at $55 million, still doesn't make her "truly well off." To be "truly well off" you need to have hundreds of millions- if not billions. This tells you about the kind of people Hillary surrounds herself with; so insanely rich that she feels small by comparison.
Meanwhile, as Clinton downplays her wealth, she continues to take in $200,000 or more giving speeches. Recently, students at UNLV protested the fact that Clinton will receive $225,000 to give a speech later this Fall while at the same time tuition is spiking 17%.
JUST BE HONEST
Poor and middle class people don't hate the rich. In fact, we envy them. However, the last thing those of us at the lower end of the economic spectrum want to hear- especially at a time of unprecedented income inequality- is a wealthy person downplaying their wealth, acting like they're struggling to make ends meet when they're not.
With income inequality tearing our social fabric apart, creating two America's, the haves and the have-nots, economic populism is on the rise. The fight for the common man to get a fair shot against a corrupt system- an idea popularized by the Occupy Movement and personified by the politics of Elizabeth Warren- is the direction in which the Democrat Party is moving.
With this in mind, Democrats must tactfully select a candidate for 2016 who espouses this position. They must nominate someone who fights for the common man seeking a $10 minimum wage, not the one-percent CEO class who rakes in 95% of all new wealth.
We will probably never see a "47%" video out of Hillary, but after watching her shamelessly downplay her enormous wealth on several occasions recently, she's teetering on the edge of becoming a Romney-like figure in the eyes of the public: rich, out of touch and clueless about what it means to be an average American.
If the image sticks, it could end up losing her an election.
Just ask Mitt Romney.
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