Hillary Clinton’s Interesting New Math. (It doesn’t appear to have been devised by academics, and hopefully it will not become part of public school curriculums.)

Defending herself from claims that she’s too cozy with Wall Street, Clinton responded, “Not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small….”

The Federal Election Commission defines a small donation as less than $200. Her campaign has received $13.3 million in small donations, just a fraction of her total haul of $76.1 million this cycle. There’s no way to know how many individual donors made up that group, percent, because they don’t have to be disclosed. But her statement is certainly misleading. Her money comes from chiefly big donors.

—     Clinton’s money isn’t from “small” donors, Isaac Arnsdorf, Politico, today

Hmmm.  And how many of the big donors are from the private-prison-industrial complex—directly and indirectly?  How sick.  Good thing Bernie Sanders made private for-profit prisons an issue back when Clinton was losing ground to him.  After all, Clinton probably will be the nominee, and then (hopefully) the president.  And now she’s promised to … something about them.  The something probably isn’t aggressively supporting enactment of a law prohibiting them federally and in state and local systems, but we can’t have everything, can we?

And how many of her “bundlers” are lawyers or lobbyists for the finance industry?

And how long does she expect to get away with her version of the new math, in which, y’know, $76.1 million is wayyyy less than $13.3 million, and in which long division doesn’t exist?  As in, the fewer the number of people who provided the donations in the $76.1 million group, the more influence those folks are likely to have over her?

Just askin’.

Also wonderin’ how many people out there think the big finance guys who’ve maxed out their direct donations and are supporting her two super PACs are doing this in gratitude for all that federal assistance she helped obtain for Manhattan after 9/11, as she (dismayingly) claimed last night.  And how many people think the federal government wouldn’t have provided extensive recovery assistance to Manhattan were it not for Clinton’s absolute insistence that it do so.

I think AB should take a poll on this.

UPDATE: So Clinton’s fondness for ridiculous non sequiturs has finally caught up with her. Usually she uses these as cutesy slams against her campaign opponent, these days Bernie Sanders.  But this time it was in defending herself against the charge that she is compromised by her acceptance of huge amounts of money in donations from the finance industry, and it was so transparently absurd that no one needed to explain the background of the falsity, or whatever.

This penchant of hers for non sequiturs suggests she thinks that most of the public won’t catch on because the public will learn of the underlying facts only later.  And, y’know, … women.  But catching on to this one didn’t require some background information.  So now I’m wondering: How stupid does she think the public is?

Added 11/15 at 8:59 p.m.

P.S. Was I the only one who was surprised that Clinton mispronounced Paul Krugman’s name?  I said when I heard that, “Okayyy. She’s definitely not Jewish.” But she also is definitely not someone who’s ever watched or listened to him being introduced.

Just sayin’.

Added 11/15 at 9.29 p.m.