2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary Clinton just doesn’t get it: She’s already running a losing campaign [View all]karynnj
(59,501 posts)give back. Bill Clinton was born poor to a single mother and Hillary Clinton to a middle class family. They did not have the money, the class status - that meant that they were peers to other wealthy people, or the idea that because they were given so much, they were expected to give back. ( Seriously -- if you wanted to raise this example, you should have done so when FDR's 4th cousin was the nominee in 2004 - he WAS born to privilege.)
In the 1990s, the NYT's wrote of the Clintons representing something different - a meritocracy rather than an aristocracy. Their positions were their result of the skills and talents they had. They were not born to go to Yale Law School, they earned that chance. They earned everything they got.
At this point, they have been members of a very rarified elite for over 40 years. They are neither the poor or middle class kids they were or the young overachievers new to privilege they were after Yale. They are two wealthy people who have been among the most powerful in the world for at least 20 years.