I stand between you and the apocalypse

I know the Grey Lady is in her dotage but I find it inexplicable that, as deeply supportive of Hillary Clinton as they are, that they let this reporting through the editorial process.

A couple of weeks ago Trump garnered positive headlines for being the first national politician to bring attention to and visit Louisiana in its storm plight, goading a vacationing Obama to visit first thing after he was back but apparently having no effect on Clinton's priorities (fund raising). In the past week, Trump has been doing serious outreach to Mexico and getting plaudits for his presidential mien. Yesterday he made a major presentation to the Black faith community and, again, has been receiving, albeit sometimes reluctant, plaudits for his efforts and performance.

The New York Times can't help that Clinton spent her day, characteristically, raising money from the rich vested interests of rent seekers, but, while accurate, the contrast between these two opening paragraphs and the Trump machine is startling.

From Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich by Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin. This is the same Amy Chozick who a few weeks ago struggled (and failed) to present the Clintons as having been in financially parlous condition early in their marriage, thus explaining, or so went the theory, Hillary Clinton's need for money. I analyzed that reporting in Let The Sun Shine.

Demonstrating the same incapacity to hide the ball as showed in the earlier article, Chozick opens today's reporting with:

At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”

“I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.

"I stand between you and the apocalypse?" What is this, the French Revolution? All very Marie Antoinette. The echoes of the two women are striking. From that Wikipedia article:

Despite her initial popularity, a growing number of the population eventually came to dislike her, accusing L'Autrichienne, "the Austrian woman" (a nickname given her upon her arrival to France by Louis XV's daughters, Mesdames de France), of being profligate, promiscuous, and of harbouring sympathies for France's enemies, particularly her native Austria. The Diamond Necklace affair damaged her reputation further. During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country's financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker.

Madame Deficit indeed. There is further elaboration of Marie Antoinette's behavior (and its similarities to the current candidate) here, Declining Popularity.

Now that Chozick has put us on the track of perfidious French Royalty, isn't there at least a passing kinship between L'Etat, c'est moi (I am the State) and a certain "What difference at this point, does it make?"

But back to the reporting.

Mr. Trump has pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s noticeably scant schedule of campaign events this summer to suggest she has been hiding from the public. But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour, according to a New York Times tally.

And while Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.

“It’s the old adage, you go to where the money is,” said Jay S. Jacobs, a prominent New York Democrat.

Mrs. Clinton raised about $143 million in August, the campaign’s best month yet. At a single event on Tuesday in Sagaponack, N.Y., 10 people paid at least $250,000 to meet her, raising $2.5 million.

If Mr. Trump appears to be waging his campaign in rallies and network interviews, Mrs. Clinton’s second presidential bid seems to amount to a series of high-dollar fund-raisers with public appearances added to the schedule when they can be fit in. Last week, for example, she diverged just once from her packed fund-raising schedule to deliver a speech.

So hobnobbing with the rich and ignoring everyone else is just who she is. Let them eat cake.

With this kind of reporting, either Chozick really doesn't like Hillary Clinton (improbable given her employer), or she is making the very best of the little she has given Clinton's deeply corrupt behavior (quite possible), or perhaps she is playing a very deep game.

If Hillary Clinton is the corrupt, money grubbing, interest favoring, favor dealing, deficit spending, ignorant, clueless Marie Antoinette, then who is Trump? Maybe Chozick is trying to evoke Maximilien Robespierre? But Robespierre had two phases, an early, more noble one where he was advocating for democracy, the poor, equality of rights, suffrage, abolition of slavery, etc. And then there was his second phase as leader of the brutal Committee of Public Safety which played a central role in the Reign of Terror during which some 50,000 people were summarily executed or guillotined.

That seems a little apocalyptic. Godwin's Law only has so much reach.

Perhaps Chozick is being more subtle and casting Trump as the buffoonish, crazy, madman, morally execrable Jean-Jacques Rousseau with his many illegitimate children? Rousseau had a deep influence on the leaders of the Revolution (and progressive totalitarians everywhere) but was kind of a messy monster in his personal life. Perhaps that is the take-away Chozick wishes to invoke.

Possible, but I think a deep game is probably the least likely explanation for this reporting.