If he weren't a rich man
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is no less deserving to live well than the rest of us, but he never includes himself in the 1 percenters he rails against.
The self-proclaimed Democratic socialist made nearly $1.06 million in 2017, his second year in a row to be a millionaire. Most of it came from advances and royalties on his book, "Our Revolution," which came out after his unsuccessful attempt to get the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
Sanders actually didn't even need to be a millionaire to be in the 1 percenters he says are ruining the country. According to an Economic Policy Institute report, he made the cut at $389,436. In Vermont, though, he needed even less - $299,259.
Indeed, the senator needed to have earned only a bit more, $1.15 million, to have the national average income of a 1 percenter.
Sanders, who talks as if he were the leader of the poor, is no slouch at fine living. Indeed, he has three homes, one in Washington, D.C., one in Burlington, Vermont, and his most recent purchase, a lakefront home on Lake Champlain in Vermont.
So, the next time you hear the socialist start ranting, think of him kicked back on the porch of his lake house, and shed no tears.
All about me
Former President Barack Obama, at a Democratic fundraiser in Beverly Hills last week, demonstrated that he still doesn't understand the problems Americans had with his administration and why Donald Trump, with all his faults, was elected to succeed him.
"If I have one regret during my presidency," he said, having been introduced as the "real president of the United States," "it is that people were so focused on me and the battles we were having, particularly after we lost the House, that folks stopped paying attention up and down the ballot."
What Obama seems not to understand is that he, his administration, and the Democrats who supported him and his policies were all connected. He didn't govern in a vacuum. He was re-elected in 2012 but became the first president in U.S. history to be re-elected with fewer votes than in his first election. And then he and his party lost the Senate two years later.
It wasn't him, as he imagined. It was the whole ball of Democratic wax.
And then, either realizing or forgetting he was describing his own party, Obama said it was time for the kvetchers and the howlers at the moon to move on.
"A majority of the American people prefer a country that comes together rather than being divided," he said. The majority of the country doesn't want to see a dog-eat-dog world where everybody is angry all the time."
Time will tell whether his party got the message.
No love from Joe
Poor Hillary Clinton. She just can't catch a break, even from her supporters. MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, whose distaste for President Trump is palpable, said the former presidential candidate is to blame for the current president's ability to select a Supreme Court candidate upon the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, a frequent swing voter on the court.
"Hillary Clinton didn't visit Wisconsin and didn't visit Michigan enough," he said. "Hillary never had a message. She ran a horrible campaign, and this is just, this is a consequence of it."
A 28-year-old Bernie Sanders disciple who knocked off a 10-term congressman to win the Democratic primary for a seat in Congress from New York last week had a message that was "more inspiring in three minutes than what Hillary Clinton gave us in two years," Scarborough said.
Undoubtedly, he was speaking for himself and his like-minded friends when he said "several people" noted "this was the bleakest moment in their lives, and they didn't know how they were going to move forward with it."
Test yourself
When it comes to stereotypes about political parties, the mistake Democrats most often make about Republicans, according to a recent poll published in the Journal of Politics, is the size of their wallet.
While Democrats estimate 44 percent of Republicans earn $250,000 or more per year - "rich Republicans, blah, blah, blah" - the actual number is 2 percent.
And they also think almost half of folks in the GOP - 44 percent each - are Southerners and evangelicals. But only 36 percent who favor the party live in the South, and only 34 percent are evangelicals.
Democrats also think 44 percent of Republicans are 65 or older. But only 21 percent of GOP adherents have reached that age.
As for what Republicans get wrong about Democrats, the biggest difference is they believe 44 percent are union members, but only 11 percent are. They also believe nearly half of the party (46 percent) is black, but blacks actually make up about a quarter (24 percent) of the party.
They also guess 38 percent of Democrats are lesbian, gay or bisexual, but only 6 percent of those who favor the party make those claims. And agnostic or atheist? Republicans estimate that's slightly more than a third (36 percent) of Democrats, but it's actually only 9 percent. However, 26 percent of Democrats are unaffiliated with any faith.