The Other 98%

Trump cried communism at Mount Rushmore, so Bill Clinton named what America actually has: socialism for the super-rich. Friday night in the Black Hills, Trump used the country's 250th birthday to warn of "a resurgence of the communist menace in our land. "

The next morning, Bill Clinton answered.

While the other living ex-presidents posted gentle civics homilies for the Fourth, the 79-year-old two-termer published a bill of particulars.

Masked agents seizing people from their homes, their workplaces, the street.

A war on Iran started on a whim, with no objective and no exit.

A Supreme Court staffed with lifetime loyalists and a compliant Congress, used to prosecute enemies and choke off speech.

A federal government converted into a profit center for the people who run it and their friends.

"Their New Deal is socialism for the super-rich," Clinton wrote.

In American politics, socialism is the charge aimed at the left: Medicare, unions, any proposal to tax the rich. Clinton aimed the same word upward, at the bailouts and tax breaks that flow to the people who need the help least.

The idea was not original to him. Martin Luther King, Jr. made the point in the 1960s, when he said the country ran socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor. What made it notable was the source.

Clinton had spent his presidency pulling the Democratic Party toward the center, signing welfare reform, deregulating Wall Street, announcing that the era of big government was over. Thirty years later he was reaching for a line from the left wing he had spent a career holding at a distance.

He did not mention Trump by name. The statement referred only to "the people in charge."

The day before, Trump had spoken warmly about Clinton. Reading a children's book about the presidents on Usha Vance's podcast, he was asked about the former president. "He actually was a nice guy," Trump said. "I like Bill Clinton a lot. I still do."

Clinton's statement went out the next morning. He did not return the compliment.