So Hillary Clinton wants to be the champion of everyday Americans, the folks who haven’t done well in Barack Obama’s economic recovery. She wants to be president because she cares deeply about ordinary Americans. She hasn’t actually used the word, but you get the impression that she finds income inequality un-American.

It takes a certain kind of person to say what Hillary has been saying with a straight face.

She makes north of $200,000 for a single speech. Riding to Iowa in a van and eating a burrito at Chipotle on the way doesn’t make her one of the folks.  Two-hundred thousand-plus for a talk is about four times more than the typical American household makes in a full year. How’s that for income inequality?

And who has the money to pay those kinds of speaking fees? Well, a lot of it comes from moguls at big banks and hedge fund managers. You know, the very people she’ll be putting in the crosshairs – wink, wink.

During the mid-term elections last year, Mrs. Clinton told a cheering crowd at a political rally in Boston, “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,”

Really? Then who does, Hillary?

But let’s cut Mrs. Clinton some slack. She’s not stupid. She doesn’t believe what she said. She just wants to be president. And she knows where the base of the Democratic Party currently resides – which is, much further to the left than when her husband ran for president. She knows that a lot of Democrats would prefer a candidate who is more “progressive.” So she’ll run a populist campaign of envy – portraying the wealthy as the bad guys – while taking billions from them to run her campaign.

You’d think big business would be worried. But they’re not. Why? Because they don’t believe anything she says. And they’re not alone. According to the most recent CBS poll, only 42 percent of the country thinks Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy.

So it’s no surprise that the Republican National Committee has taken notice of Hillary’s campaign rhetoric. “It’s hard to take Hillary Clinton seriously when she charges over four times what the average person makes to give a 90 minute speech, and when the Clintons’ own income has exceeded the CEO pay she now decries. There are clearly no limits on phoniness and hypocrisy for Clinton’s campaign,” said spokesman Michael Short.

While it may be true that Hillary is taking flak from all sides, when it counts the most she’ll get support from the cavalry that always rides to the aid of liberal Democrats: the so-called mainstream media.

Yes, it’s true, that they’re not big fans at the moment. They don’t like the fact that she ignores them and would rather talk to “everyday” folks who don’t ask tough questions than to them.

And it’s true that reporters would like someone else – someone like Elizabeth Warren – to jump into the race, because a fight is more interesting to journalists than is a coronation.

And, as Politico reported, “When asked why Clinton hasn’t done more to reach out to reporters over the years, one Clinton campaign veteran began to spin several theories. She was too busy, she was too prone to speaking her mind and the like – then abruptly cut to the chase: ‘Look, she hates you. Period. That’s never going to change.’”

So if she hates the press you can’t really expect the press to love her.

But …

When the Republicans settle on one candidate, when Hillary is running against a real person with a real name who is a living and breathing conservative opponent, the press will revert to form: They’ll treat her the way they treated the last historic candidate.

Except, they won’t slobber nearly as much. Barack Obama was new – and Hillary has been around forever.

And although liberals will never admit it, race trumps gender (unless you’re an ardent feminist in which case nothing trumps gender).

So the mainstreams won’t slobber over Hillary the way they did over Barack Obama. And they won’t like her as much. But when the campaign gets going for real, they’ll like her more than they like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul or Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal or Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee or Rick Perry or Carly Fiorina  … or any other Republican she might face.  In other words, they’ll like her enough.