I’ve said it before: I don’t hate Hillary Clinton. I’ve said all along she has every right to make a Huckabee of herself as long as she wishes. I’m old enough to remember many a hard-edged fight, such as when mild-mannered Jimmy Carter said he’d kick Ted Kennedy’s ass in the primaries. And did. And the party was split some as a result.

But there are some thing’s Hillary’s done that piss me off. Like when she said that MoveOn members opposed the war against the Taliban, a bald-faced Karl Rove lie. More than that though, I really am insulted by her wake-up call in mid February, when John Edwards was gone and she re-cast herself as an empathetic member of the working class.

I know all about 3 am duties. Up till a year ago, I was dumping trash cans and cleaning toilets at that hour, just getting by. I was raised on milk that was half powdered, and bean & mayo sandwiches, and a rare luxury was a bottle of soda pop. By the time I reached sixteen, I’d only been to a movie theater 8 times, because that was an unaffordable luxury, too. As were pants without patches. That’s what like was like for the family of a career Air Force sergeant in the Fifties and Sixties.

And Clinton’s portrayal of herself as a working class hero insults every working class family. her actual record indicates she’s done a bit about the needs of babies and elementary school children, mostly in healthcare and education. Great, I give credit where it’s due. But as unusual as it is in the conservative era to demonstrate a sensible compassion to innocent children, it really represents a basic instinct in most Americans. We want our kids to be okay, we like puppies and we think crime sucks. It’s npt particularly daring to be pro-child, pro-puppy or anti-crime.

Hillary’s always been a big city girl. her only real experience as a working class person was on a summer vacation jaunt where she handled fish at a processing plant in Alaska. She complained about the safety conditions and was out of that job with less than a month at it. In the working class, in most cases, you shut up and endure it or the rent’s not going to get paid.

That’s not to suggest that she doesn’t know some working class people. But you can be few of them ever get invites to her soirees, except as the housekeeping and catering staff. And even they probably get paid better than much of the rest of the working class does.

So her political use of populism, 60 years into her life, smacks of playing the rubes. And from my personal experience working alongside those people, I know most of them really aren’t fooled by her schtick. But just as my parents did, they’ll sometimes vote for a dishonest politician simply because they showed up and asked them for their vote. They never expected real change would occur as a result; they just dispensed their vote as a courtesy to those who asked them for it.

Bill Clinton, who grew up in less privileged circumstances, is simply astute enough to understand human nature, so they’ve both learned that a few percentage points can be gained that old-fashioned way. But it never seems to translate into public policies that have advanced the lives of the working class. They’re smart enough as campaigners to keep her candidacy alive that way, but there’s just no real quid pro quo beyond an occasional boost in the minimum wage to keep the working class from becoming completely impoverished.

That’s not heroic; that’s minimalistic pandering, fishing for votes to advance the fishers and not the fish.