"screw 'em"

“Screw ‘em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.” Hillary Clinton, in 1995, talking to her husband about working-class Democrats. (5 Things at salon.com)

Yep … that’s the same Hillary Clinton who is now out throwing back a shot and a beer with the working class folks of Pennsylvania.

So which is the real Hillary? Is she the presidential campaigner of today who can relate to the working class, is not elitist, and is in touch with working class voters? Or is she the same old politician who will do anything or say anything to get elected, and who once in power governs by what people can do for her, instead of what she can do for the country?

UPDATE: Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol, who also attended the 1995 meeting referenced above, weighs in at Talking Points Memo: “Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices — usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.” Also: “I think this whole angle of ‘gotcha’ politics about snippets of speech transposed from one context to another is ridiculous and pathological for democracy in America … it is particularly despicable of (the Clintons) to criticize Obama for the sort of observation/analysis that was routine in and around the 1990s Clinton White House.”

“Despicable” indeed.