She eats at Chipotle. (Order:
chicken burrito bowl.) She travels by van. (Model: A
Chevy Express Explorer Limited SE nicknamed
the "Scooby" van.) She barely figures in her own presidential campaign
announcement video. (Entrance timing: A minute and a half into
the two-minute clip.)
Her campaign staff is so cheap they don't have business cards, they
commute by Bolt Bus, and they aren't even equipped with real phones.
This is the "new" Hillary Clinton in the early days of her 2016
presidential bid. Absent -- for now -- are the swagger, the grand
pronouncements, the packed gymnasiums and auditoriums, and the claques
of well-paid consultants falling over each other to advise and guide her
that we saw in Clinton's last presidential bid. This time around,
Clinton is casting herself in a new role: as the humble and understated
people’s candidate. She cares about "everyday Iowans" and "everyday
Granite Staters." She really does! Her carefully staged events with
those "everyday" Americans at small-town coffee shops and local
businesses give her the chance to "share ideas to tackle today’s
problems and demonstrate her commitment to earning their votes.
This effort to recast Clinton as a folksy, down-to-earth, woman of
we-the-people is, however, about to collide with the reality of American
politics in the money-crazed, post-
Citizens United era.
Winning the White House in 2016 will cost somewhere between $1 billion
and $3 billion -- money raised by the candidate's own campaign and
outside groups like super PACs and dark-money nonprofits. And this in an
election where it’s already estimated that the overall money may
hit $10 billion.
Jeb Bush, arguably the most formidable candidate in the GOP field, is
on his way to raising $100 million in just the first few months of 2015,
a year and a half before the actual election. The prospect of being
drastically outgunned by Bush has prodded Clinton to speed up her
fundraising schedule and hit the donor circles in New York City and
Washington in settings that couldn't be more removed from the local
Chipotle. "I need to get out there earlier,"
Politico quoted her telling one of her aides.
In the coming months, whatever hours Clinton spends introducing
herself to voters in small-town America, she will spend hundreds more
raising money in four-star hotels and multimillion-dollar homes in
Hollywood and San Francisco, New York and Boston, Washington and Miami.
She will court wealthy liberals across the land and urge them to
collectively give tens of millions of dollars to her campaign. The
question underlying this inevitable mad dash for cash isn’t "Can Hillary
Clinton raise the funds?" The Clintons are practiced buckrakers.
The question is: "Can Clinton claim to stand for 'everyday
Americans,' while hauling in huge sums of cash from the very wealthiest
of us?"
This much cannot be disputed: Clinton's connections to the financiers
and bankers of this country -- and this country's campaigns -- run
deep, as Nomi Prins, former Wall Street exec and author of
All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power (just out in paperback), writes:
The Clintons and Their Banker Friends.
As she documents in her book, the Clintons have longstanding ties to
the mightiest banks on Wall Street. Those alliances will prove vital as
Hillary tries to keep up in the “money primary” of the 2016 campaign.
But as she tries to appeal to working and middle class people, you can
expect her opponents to use Clinton's Wall Street connections against
her.
And it’s reasonable to ask: Who counts more to such a candidate,
the person you met over that chicken burrito bowl or the Citigroup
partner you met over crudités and caviar?
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