Mt. Destinto-Precedente, Iowa — In the days and weeks before Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) officially threw his proverbial hat into the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination ring, the woman who all Democrats throughout the entire country had gotten together with one another and decided should and will be the President of the United States of America after next year’s election — former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton (D) — had been trying to distance herself from the perception of her being a highly-connected member of the elite ruling class by invoking populist themes. Whether she was speaking about wealth inequality, or criminal justice reform, Ms. Clinton has done her very best to let the American people know she is fully aware of her image, and she wants to be a president for the common man.

Up until Sanders entered the race officially, Clinton could have sole dominion over populist rhetoric. Now that Sanders has entered the race as someone with a cache of authenticity surrounding populist ideas, can Clinton still pump out the pro-people rhetoric without Sanders calling her out for past actions that would indicate she is not the uber-liberal she portrays herself to be? Her campaign hopes so.

“We know in terms of things like Hillary being very hawkish on national defense and getting massive donations from the same financial industry insiders that bankrolled Obama and the Republican administration before her, we may not look like the most progressive, populist alternative for voters,” Cheryl Tomlinson, a Hillary 2016 spokeswoman told reporters at a recent campaign stop in Mt. Destino-Precedente, Iowa. “What we’re banking on is Democratic voters seeing that while Senator Senators is a worthy foe, a smart man, and clearly someone who speaks with conviction about subjects that genuinely interest him and not in a superficial, ‘hoping you think I too care about this issue’ kind of way…he’s just not a serious candidate. Not as serious as Madam Secretary Senator Pre-Annointed Goddess Clinton anyway.”

Does this mean that Team Hillary will start running attack ads on the elder statesman Sanders? “Absolutely not,” Tomlinson told us. “For starters, we kinda don’t have to. I mean, hello? We’re Team Hillary. We wake up every day, stretch, yawn, fart, and a million dollars falls onto the floor,” the campaign adviser told us. “Also, we love Bernie. We follow him on Facebook. Where do you think we get some of our best ideas fr- I mean, he’s a great guy and has great ideas,” Tomlinson also told reporters.

“Let’s just get really real shall we,” Tomlinson asked reporters. “Does anyone here actually think the Democratic National Committee will hand Bernie the nomination over us? Of course they won’t. We’ve been Ready for Hillary since the day after President Obama was re-elected in November of 2012. If ever there was anything that’s already in the bag, it’s our 2016 nomination…just like it was in the bag in 2008, but wait, what was I saying,” a pause from Ms. Tomlinson. “Oh, that’s right. So here’s what we’re hoping will happen — Hillary keeps…lending credibility to Bernie’s ideas by making them sound like her own, and then whenever he gets tired of this whole ‘running for president with integrity’ thing he’s doing, he goes back to the Senate, bip-bop-boop, President Hillary in the hizzy.”