It's finally official.  Hillary Clinton is a Democrat.

"Hey, Arnold, did you just fall off the turnip truck?  Of course Hillary Clinton is a Democrat."

Hold on there, partner, let me explain.  I know that Hillary Clinton is a member of the Democratic Party, whose nomination for president she seeks and will probably get.

When I say it's finally official that she's a Democrat, what I mean is that she has finally gotten around to running her campaign along "traditional" Democrat lines.

The amazing thing is that it took this long.  On the other hand, maybe not.  What started out as a sure thing became less so as Bernie Sanders's candidacy caught on.

Throw in inconvenient truths about "deleted" emails and mishandled classified material.

And then there's the fact that three other Democrats, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb, also decided to run for president.

Not to be ignored is the fact that two of her four challengers are much younger.  Chafee is 62, while O'Malley is 52.  Though 69, Jim Webb is a decorated Marine.

More significantly, all but two of the 17 Republican candidates, Trump and Pataki, are younger than Hillary Clinton.  Rubio and Cruz are more than 20 years younger!

The point is that Granny Clinton and her inner circle all realize that the youth vote will be essential in '16, just as it was essential to Obama in '08 and '12.

So the conundrum is how to get "the kids" to vote for Granny.  Why not buy them off?  It worked for Obama.

This, of course, is how Democrats have been winning elections since FDR.  The list of freebies and government agencies created to dole them out is depressingly long.

So Clinton wants new federal spending designed to help students pay tuition at public colleges without having to take loans.  Price tag: $350 billion over ten years.

Never mind that Hillary Clinton, even if elected twice, will not be in office long enough to see to it that every penny of this boondoggle gets delivered.

Never mind also that ten years means five congressional elections, during which time anything can happen, depending on who runs things and how the economy is doing.

Finally, never mind that Clinton has zero, zero authority to deliver anything right now.  "The kids" will have to trust her.  "Trust Clinton" is an oxymoron.

So what has been the reaction in the press?

Writing in the New York Times, Patrick Healy predictably applauds Clinton's plan because it is "an aggressive response to what many Americans – Democrats and Republicans alike – see as a worsening crisis forcing young adults to move back home with their parents and struggle to get out from under repayment bills."

Granny Hillary to the rescue, boys and girls!

Without the rose-colored glasses, however, a very different picture emerges. Writing at MarketWatch, Brette Arends contends that "Hillary Clinton's new plan to subsidize college tuition will do little or nothing to help most young students struggling to pay for college. But it will do a lot to boost the incomes of the 'college-industrial complex.'"

Arends goes on to point out that once they see there's free money to be had, colleges will simply raise tuition costs, gobbling up Clinton's subsidies.

It's pretty obvious when you think about it. Tuition costs have only really skyrocketed to insane levels since the federal government first started ramping up loans and grants in the 1970s. Since 1980, tuition at private colleges is up 800% and at state universities by 900%, according to College Board data. The growth in tuitions has outstripped inflation by a factor of three-to-four. [Federal Reserve Bank of New York] researchers found a direct connection between increases in aid – such as federal loans and Pell Grants – and rising tuition.

Does Clinton pay attention to simple market economics?  I know, stupid question.  She doesn't care, nor do Democrats in general.  It's all about power, achieved through vote-buying schemes of one sort or another.

A final thought: Arends insightfully describes the "college-industrial complex" as a "cartel."  I hope this idea catches on and will convince a Republican president to do something about it, beginning with abolishing the Department of Education.