Oh, Hillary. We’ll always have Jerry’s Cakes and Donuts, but ...

Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, New York senator, secretary of state, and very possibly the next president of the United States, had to extract one of her modest-heeled shoes from her mouth last week.

In a manner of speaking, that was true, since they listed assets between $781,000 and $1.8 million at the time while facing debts between $2.3 million and $10.6 million.

But to suggest they were in dire fiscal straits is to strain credulity. Hillary had signed a book deal worth $8 million. She had been elected to the Senate the previous fall, which offered a salary of around $150,000 annually.

Bill would rake in millions from speeches. The Clintons had just obtained a loan to buy a home valued at $1.7 million in upstate New York.

In fact, by 2009, their joint worth was somewhere between $10 million and $50 million, according to official documents. So don’t plan any bake sales for them.

Hillary swiftly realized her stumble and soon said the couple has been doing well and “we’ve continued to be blessed in the last 14 years.”

But it showed her vulnerability. She is not the candidate her husband was and this showed her potential weakness for the ill-considered phrase.

It also reminded me of 2008, when Hillary was desperately trying to catch Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. South Dakota and Montana held the final two primaries.

That meant a lot of local journalists, even me, had opportunities to view Clinton and Obama in action.

On May 16, less than three weeks before the vote, Hillary returned to Rapid City, S.D., where I edited a weekly newspaper at the time. We were told she was planning a stop at a blue-collar place to show her solidarity with us plain, simple, non-millionaire folks.

While many of us pulled for The Brass Rail, a somewhat seedy but darkly charming bar, where we envisioned Hillary hoisting a shot or two, her staff chose the doughnut shop.

The media scum were allowed inside, but we were ordered behind a counter and told not to address her highness, er, the junior senator from the great state of New York.

She came in, all smiles, and chatted with customers, some who were merely there for a baked good, others who had been tipped off that Hillary was on her way.

Clinton breezed past the penned-in media but paused in front of me.

“You look very familiar,” she said.

I was dumbstruck, even more than usual, before I said that I had covered her during a health-care meeting in Lennox, S.D., in 1994. She smiled, said that had been a memorable event, and moved on.

This time, Hillary got the headlines and TV time she had sought. Powerful woman rubs elbows with the regular folks. Video at 5, 6 and 10.

I spoke with her a time or two again, and saw her at an event in a Rapid City park. Once again, she came to a quick stop when she saw me. It‘s something we have between us, I guess.

I’m not especially pro or con Hillary. But as a non-millionaire, I admit to being disappointed that she tried to claim poverty when she and her husband were holding winning lottery tickets.

Liar, liar, pantsuit on fire, some have said. I’ll chalk it up to the same stumbles that cost her the 2008 nomination.

She will need to be a lot better to become the party’s pick in 2016. But if she doesn‘t win, at least she will have a lot of cash to soften the blow.