It sounded absolutely insane when Hillary Clinton said that business and corporations don’t create jobs. What was she trying to say? What was the point of saying it? I have a few theories. Here’s my favorite:
Clinton is a corporatist. She’s arguably the leading corporatist in the Democratic Party. Elizabeth Warren is arguably her main threat for the 2016 Democratic nomination. Warren is a populist. Clinton needs to co-opt some Warren.
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What does a corporatist say when trying to sound like a populist? Well, G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday had a great passage about an analogous case:
“When first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, ‘Down! down! presumptuous human reason!’ they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once … I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out ‘Blood!’ abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, ‘Let the weak perish; it is the Law.’ Well, well, it seems majors don’t do this. I was nabbed again …”
That is, Hillary thinks that being a populist means saying insane things like businesses don’t create jobs.
