A 13-September Pew Survey confirms, in my opinion, the broad outlines of Ms. Clinton’s recent “basket of deplorables” comment. I’m happy to stipulate that the number is 30% rather than 50% — the point is that
1. The number is not 0%
2. The number is ENORMOUSLY larger than the same measure applied to supporters of Ms. Clinton
From the above piece (emphasis mine):
Ahead of the presidential election, the demographic profiles of the Republican and Democratic parties are strikingly different. On key characteristics – especially race and ethnicity and religious affiliation – the two parties look less alike today than at any point over the last quarter-century.
The fundamental demographic changes taking place in the country – an aging population, growing racial and ethnic diversity and rising levels of education – have reshaped both party coalitions. But these changes, coupled with patterns of partisan affiliation among demographic groups, have influenced the composition of the two parties in different ways. The Democratic Party is becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging at a slower rate. Within the GOP the pattern is the reverse: Republican voters are becoming more diverse, better-educated and less religious at a slower rate than the country generally, while the age profile of the GOP is growing older more quickly than that of the country.
That’s a gentle way of saying that older, racist, uneducated and religious voters are moving to the GOP.
Here is a finding that strikes me as particularly provocative:
In 2008, the year Obama was first elected, Democrats held sizable advantages among voters 50 and older. Among those 50-64, 51% identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party, compared with 40% who identified with the GOP or leaned Republican. The Democrats’ advantage among voters 65 and older was almost as large (49% to 40%).
Both groups of older voters are now more Republican than eight years ago. Today, voters 50-64 tilt Republican (48% identify with the GOP or lean Republican, while 46% identify with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic). Republicans hold a wide, 51% to 42% lead among voters 65 and older – an edge that is nine points greater than it was in 2008.
White voters – who were roughly divided in their partisan leanings eight years ago – are now much more likely to identify as Republican or lean Republican (54%) than to say they identify as Democrats or lean Democratic (39%).
My interpretation is that older white American men were, in fact, NOT ready for a black President.
Here is a similarly provocative finding:
Some of the sharpest movement toward the GOP has come among less educated and older whites. Whites with no college experience have become 14 points more likely to affiliate with the GOP since 2008, including a six-point shift over the last four years. White voters age 65 and older are now 13 points more likely to identify as Republican or lean Republican than they were eight years ago.
In my view, this buttresses my intepretation. Please note that I am NOT saying that “all GOP voters are racist”. I am saying, instead:
1. Older and less educated whites are moving towards the GOP
2. The are doing so in response to:
2a. Barack Obama’s race, and
2b. The relentless racist dog-whistles of the GOP in general and Donald Trump in particular
Here is another significant finding:
While the GOP has made gains overall and among key groups, there is no sign that Democratic affiliation is waning among the party’s core constituents. College graduates, blacks and Hispanics are as likely to identify as Democrats or lean Democratic today as they were four or eight years ago.
The GOP has been executing its “southern strategy” for decades now. It seems to me that this poll provides data about the effect of that strategy. I join the several advisors to the Hillary Clinton campaign who have told the media that it is time for America to have a conversation about the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and bigotry of the Donald Trump campaign. It seems to me that this poll provides some valuable data to inform that conversation.
I have focused my comments on white American men, because this demographic is highlighted in the survey. This thread-starter is already too long, I refer you to the survey for specifics of white men versus the larger sample and other demographic groups that were polled.
I invite your thoughts.
Hillary Clinton is just telling it like it is.
But, I don’t think the poll you site proves the point particularly well. Based on this poll, I think you’re jumping to the conclusion about racism. I happen to believe everything HRC said, and agree with you completely. However, I think there are polls out there that do a far better job of demonstrating the point you’re making. I’d start with the dramatic number of Trump voters who are “birthers” and believe the president is a Muslim, don’t want Muslims allowed into the country, don’t want homosexuals in the country, want children of undocumenteds deported, etc.
I think the much more interesting issue is whether HRC screwed-up when she made the “deplorables” comment. Was it calculated to solidify her base? It helps to solidify his. I suspect that it’s a net-negative for her, even if her statement is based in fact.
She’s such a bad candidate… it’s depressing. Having said that, she’s my candidate, and I can’t wait to vote for her.
It was rude.
It simply isn’t true — she said “half.” Your data confirms that she was wrong (and by the way 30 to 50 is a massive gap).
Even if it were true, since when do we write people off as “deplorables?”
I don’t get it the strategy argument at all, but if it was strategy, it’s strategy I don’t like. WALK the freaking walk; she keeps saying she’s the inclusive one. OK then, be inclusive.
She was even divisive within the comment itself, separating “those we understand” from the so-called deplorables.
Sorry this just goes against everything I believe. I’m glad she walked it back,
write off White Nationalists as deplorables or people who strike 69 year-old protesters on oxygen. Breitbart.com, a sight that has dedicated itself to smearing ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and others is certainly deplorable as well.
I think the point is that the Trump campaign has given the guys with the Confederate flags and Hillary for Prison buttons a very comfortable home.
Do you know anyone who’s voting for Trump? Are they racists and white supremacists?
To that point, how many ACTUAL white nationalists have you come across? Sure they exist, and yes they have home in Trump (but guess what, they have have a home in every GOP presidential campaign — where else can they go?), but their presence is overstated.
No one knows that better than HRC. But she deliberately exaggerated. It was a hippie punch in reverse.
Yes. And many are racist.
I was shocked when a Republican “friend” told me he personally believed President Obama was not born in the USA and was secretly a Muslim shortly after he was inaugurated. This same person is naturally a Trump suppoer today.
I have another “friend” who personally welcomed East European refugees into the USA during the Cold War, but now is totally against accepting Syrian refugees. (BTW, those Cold War refugees were just as likely to be secretly Warsaw Pact agents as Syrian refugees are today of being secretly ISIS agents). This “friend” also had issues accepting African famine refugees, too. Seems white “Christian” European refugees are fine with him, but anyone else No.
I have another Trump-supporting “friend” who is totally bothered by Black Lives Matter and black NFL players not standing for the national anthem. He, of course, he supported the Bundy ranchers occupying Federal land while pointing loaded weapons at police officers. And he thinks it’s “great” for people to fly the stars and bars — including direct descendents of Union soldiers. (BTW the confederate flag is the flag of traitors who took up arms against the USA and its Constitution, and is now used today as a modern racist symbol).
Do I need continue? I have plenty of Republican “friends” who don’t think of themselves as racist, xenophobic, islamaphobic, homophobic, … , but most certainly hold very strong opinions that most certainly are. In fact, in my albeit limited experience, the number of “enlightened” Republicans is definitely smaller than those with “deplorable” views — and among self-professed Trump supporters almost none are “enlightened.”
Saying half was a big mistake. Saying he has support from “deplorables” wouldn’t have been news because it’s so obviously true. I agree that it’s terrible politics.
That said, nearly everyone I know who is voting for Trump I would consider racist and a white supremacist (small s, not part of any official group). I know a lot of people who are conservative and may vote for him, but they have not expressed that. My normally GOP father is going for Johnson as are many active GOPers I know. Those vocal for Trump that I know are racist, though. Not in the way that they would join the KKK but in the way that they talk about Latin American Immigrants as “spics,” still say “Chinky Food,” hate Obama for no discernible reason, think Gov. LePage is great, think Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, and think Colin Kaepernick is a “spoiled piece of shit.” But yeah, racist.
At least she called them ‘deplorables’, not ‘zombies’ or something with a stronger connotation.
Even when she’s politically incorrect, she does not stray very far. Admirable!
I’m not trying to be argumentative here, I’m speaking as an engineer.
If we are, for example, talking about failure rate for a production line where we expect a 1-2% failure rate, then it really does NOT matter very much whether the actual failure rate is 33% or 50%. The point is that something is very broken.
Some of us here have said that a third of Donald Trump’s supporters are, to use Ms. Clinton’s phrase, “deplorables” (I’m thinking of jconway and the Venn diagrams he has mentioned). I’m ok with an America that is 10% “deplorable”. I am NOT ok with an America that is 33% — or 50% — “deplorable”.
I don’t WANT our party to be “inclusive” of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and bigotry. I want our party to welcome those who turn their backs on such prejudice and decide they wish to join us. In theological circles, it’s called “pastoral outreach” and such.
If a congregant comes to the communion rail or confession booth and announces that he loves seducing children, robbing the poor, and beating the weak, we do NOT strive to “include” that congregant. We instead demand: 1) confession 2) repentance 3) a sincere desire to change. Then, and only then, do we offer forgiveness and then inclusion.
I disagree with you that it was an awful thing to say. I think our society needs to say it much more often and much more loudly.
To me being inclusive politically means to offer that path to redemption. You can’t do that if you write off potential voters.
So you reach out and try to understand people.
I agree that Ms. Clinton and her handlers might perhaps be more clear about the path to “redemption”.
If whatever portion are “deplorables”, than one minus that portion are immediate candidates for “reaching out”.
In the “deplorables” basket, I think we can emphasize our attitude of “love the sinner and hate the sin”. For example, forcing schools in which blacks are under-represented is likely to mean that blacks are, for a time, going to get preferential admissions treatment in comparison to equally-qualified whites. That is going to hard for some of those people to accept. I think we hold our ground on such questions.
I’m perfectly happy to write off the people who continue to make snide comments about watermelons, birth certificates and so on.
here, she did this on purpose. She’s too experienced and has evidently made similar comment before. HRC does not adlib this well. Where she fell down was in walking back the comment.
Here’s how it’s supposed to go:
1) Deplorables comment
2) Media hubbub, offended right-wingers
3) Fake walk-back: well, maybe I got the percentages wrong
4) More hubbub
5) Slight defense of comment: Reference to polls
6) More hubbub, more offended right-wingers
7) You tell me, is the Trump supporter who sucker punched a 69 year-old lady on oxygen deplorable?
8) More hubub. Right-wingers struggle to explain Trump follower and Trump.
9) Are David Duke and his supporters deplorable? Are we talking about my observation or percentages?
10) Something happens to knock this meme out of mind
Clinton’s handlers probably came up with this, but they didn’t know how to play it. It’s not her style.
I think her handlers wanted her to walk it back so that she didn’t have to handle it.
I think her handlers want this topic on the table. It will be interesting to see if it comes back after her pneumonia “issue” goes away.
Honestly, the whole point is momentum on Twitter and search engines. Pick an infrequently used word. Every time it is used now, thus making it susceptible to keyword search, it sends the message “Trump and his supporters are racists.”
And I don’t think there are a substantial number of voters that are not aware Trump is racist, the question is the percentage among his supporters who like him because of his racism or despite it. The “despite it” crowd, which exists and you should all read the pieces I’ve linked to on Akron, Scranton, and Carrier workers-just got insulted by Clinton and lumped in with the racists.
We can percieve she was careful to differentiate and even reach out to the half she estimates are desperate, and I can’t emphasize how much more charitable BMG has been to her than me on the subject of empathisizing with Trump voters, but the media will continue its false binaries and exaggerate the gaffe to make it real and on par with the loathsome things Trump says on a daily basis. The reason it was so devastating for Romney is so much of his base fell in that 47% and is quite downscale economically, which Trumps primary win has proven. Clinton is hedging that her coalition is the hodgepodge of minorities and the culturally tolerant affluent that are turned off by Trumps nativism and anti-globalist critique. There are 100 million dollars netted from capital this August showing her this strategy is working, and possibly 271 votes proving her wrong in the autumn.
I’m sorry, I just have to reject what is to me an utterly incorrect attempted conflation.
Hillary Clinton is not Mitt Romney. Hillary Clinton’s base is different. Hillary Clinton’s world view, proposals, public history, and political stances are different. Hillary Clinton has been fighting against racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamaphobia, whatever, her entire career. Mitt Romney spent his career working to help Mitt Romney.
Being a member of Mitt Romney’s 47% is NOT deplorable or even a negative unless you in that select group of the arrogant elite that Mr. Romney was pandering to when he made his comment. The 47% Mitt Romney denigrated with such contempt are NOT racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or Islamophobic.
The “47%” of Mr. Romney was 47% of AMERICA. The portion Ms. Clinton referenced was half of DONALD TRUMP supporters. That itself is a HUGE difference.
One more time … nobody disputes your “despite it” group. Ms. Clinton was careful to make that clear. We have attempted to make that clear here on BMG with regard to your earlier commentary. When you write that “[The ‘despite it’ crowd just got insulted by Clinton and lumped in with the racists”, you willfully distort what she said.
Here, from the comment below, is what she actually said about your “despite it” crowd:
I strongly object to your mischaracterization of what Ms. Clinton said. Is there something difficult to understand about “But the other basket…”? Ms. Clinton most emphatically did NOT insult her “other basket”, and she explicitly made the very same distinction you have been making here at BMG. There is absolutely NOTHING insulting about this:
There is also absolutely NOTHING comparable in Mr. Romney’s comments about his 47%.
Ms. Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” is therefore starkly different from Mr. Romney’s “47%”, and Ms. Clinton did not insult those who support Mr. Trump despite his racism.
It seems to me that one way to counter the “false binaries” and other distortion of the media is to not do such things ourselves.
Half (or a third, or whatever) of Donald Trump’s supporters is NOT 47% of America. Hillary Clinton is NOT Mitt Romney.
I do not want to live in an America where the nauseating bigotry and lies of Donald Trump, and the equally nauseating bigotry, racism, prejudice, and sheer ignorance of a significant portion of his supporters, cannot be called out for what it is. We should not and must not allow ourselves to made into a society where we must be silent about outright hate-speech from our putative “leaders”.
I welcome and applaud Ms. Clinton’s candor, her courage, and most importantly her willingness to speak LOUDLY against the hate-speech of Donald Trump and too many of his supporters.
Maybe I need this disclaimer for any of my Clinton criticisms:
I am supporting her, I want her to win, I get her policies are progressive and the media is unfair.
With that out of the way-the voters are NOT getting that message. We are in a bubble where we can see the nuance in comments like this, but we have to evaluate all her actions through the prism of a low education uninformed swing voter in a swing state. Not college educated lifelong progressive activists in a circle jerk of our own smugness.
From today’s Times two really bad conclusions:
So no Christopher, the average voter who tunes out the news, mutes ads, and doesn’t go to campaign sites has no idea what she stands for. And no Tom, the spectre of Trump is real and limits his appeal to 44% of the electorate tops, but she’s at 42%! With Stein and Johnson taking the remaining amount. That’s huge. It loses huge states like FL, OH, and CO among others.
More polling:
And people are unaware of what she stands for;
On a traditional right/left x axis Clinton is totally unlike Romney on choice, foreign policy, equality, etc. On the Y axis of class she sounds out of touch like he did while Trump has moments of lucidity like this:
Remember Osama dead/GM alive? It’s what kept Obama at above 40% with WWC voters. The youth are gonna vote third party because they are dumb, blacks and latinos aren’t coming out with the numbers they need, and we are left with a Bush/Clinton/Perot scenario where Trump could win an EV majority while losing the popular vote plurality to Clinton and having nearly 60% of the country vote for someone else. There is also a high danger now of voters just tuning out and staying home. Hillary can’t afford to make mistakes like this and she has to pivot to a positive agenda and stop focusing on Trump all the time.
You are persuading me that America is no longer a country where I want to live.
If Hillary Clinton truly cannot say what she said about Donald Trump and his supporters (neither of us disputes the accuracy of her statements), then the America that I love is done. Dead.
At the risk of provoking a Godwin’s law violation, my parents always said that they couldn’t understand how the people of Germany allowed Hitler to take power.
You are describing the means where the same energy that put Hitler in power is being invoked to put Donald Trump in the White House.
I will not live in a nation that elects Donald Trump as President.
…about “the average voter who tunes out the news, mutes ads, and doesn’t go to campaign sites”? TV ads are probably still the best way to reach large less interested audiences, but if they are even muting those then I give up. You can lead a horse to water…
n/t
Have fun guys. I’ll leave my analytical hat for a reality based blog.
How do you expect us to engage voters who are not themselves reality-based? I’m sorry, but this campaign has left me alternating between shaking my head and stark raving mad. In 2016 America a candidate with Trump’s views should be polling such that his debate participation is in doubt and HRC should be able to take the entire rest of the campaign season recovering from pneumonia and still win convincingly.
But that’s not how it is, the media is Trumps best ally and that won’t change between now and November. It’s not enough to make an anti-Trump case for Hillary, she has 12% of the electorate gravitating away from her and Trump alike and needs to bring some of them back. I’d refocus on protecting social security, protecting the environment, and helping the middle class get a fair shot.
Put Biden on the stump too, and I am really happy she’s enlisting Bernie and Warren. Trump will not win a majority of the popular vote, that isn’t in doubt, but the third party support usually collapses after Labor Day and it isn’t.
But I totally agree with you that our civic education is non existent and we have to do a better job educating voters, all of us, on their rights and responsibilities in our democracy. This election and my own campaign work has been very depressing and shows we have a long way to go, one of the reasons I am reconsidering a career in teaching instead. We need smarter citizens first before we can have smarter politics.
I agree we need smarter citizens before we can have smarter politics. I also agree that the media is Donald Trump’s best ally and that that is unlikely to change between now and November.
I think that the Ms. Clinton and her campaign was speaking to the “despite crowd” we mentioned upthread. I think that naming the “deplorables” for what they are is a perfectly viable way to reach out to the not-deplorables.
I’m not as concerned about the third-party support as you, I see little reliable polling suggests that an electoral college majority is in doubt for Ms. Clinton.
I don’t know about your 12% number (I just haven’t seen it, I’m not challenging it) and so I don’t know how much of that is coming from traditional red voters versus traditional blue voters. So long as that 12% is about equally split, I don’t much care. The issue with the Ralph Nader vote was that it hurt Al Gore far more than George W. Bush.
I suggest that our career options may be limited if America is the dystopia you present. An America that puts Donald Trump in office strikes me as an America that is unlikely to be receptive to your teaching vision. It is also an America that is hostile to your fiance and my wife.
In my opinion, the media should be our key focal point. When more than half of our population gets their “news” from Fox News, our nation in serious trouble. The media coverage of NBC and CNN has been abysmal.
As a micro-example, consider the stance of Fox News anchor Chris Wallace (emphasis mine):
If demanding that candidates tell the truth isn’t the job of a debate moderator, then the debate is worse than useless. If the much-vaunted “free press” isn’t going to hold a candidate accountable for the truth of his or her statements, who will? Never mind that this comes from an employee of the bought-and-paid-for communications arm of the GOP.
It is the job of the media to explain to “tens of millions of viewers” that there ARE objective standards of truth. Donald Trump did NOT oppose the invasion of Iraq prior to that invasion. When he says he did, he is LYING. It is not bias to interrupt Mr. Trump and correct his statement. It is, in fact, the job of the MEDIA to inform those tens of millions of viewers what truth is, how it is measured, and what the evidence shows. When the moderator does nothing, as Mr. Wallace proposes, then the result is that it becomes just another tit-for-tat exchange.
The reality that there IS an objective truth gets lost. Donald Trump did NOT oppose the Iraq invasion prior to 2004. That is the objective truth. When Mr. Wallace refuses to correct that lie, he perpetuates it.
In my view, no amount of classroom time by the best teachers in the world will make even a tiny dent in a public that is fed lies each and every day by the media and told that those lies are true. The only result will be those teachers will be targeted by complaints of political bias from parents who put more credence in Fox than in actual evidence.
We must find a way to demand that media, especially broadcast media, do a better job of telling the truth and of present all sides of contentious issues with something approaching even-handedness. We used to do that until the extreme right, already in control of the GOP, dismantled the fairness doctrine in 1987.
Much of the mess we are in today, including the dominance of the “talk radio” cesspool, is the DIRECT result of that TERRIBLE move.
Really? But I thought……
I know people keep writing that off here, but class matters as much as culture in this election, and may even matter more. Clinton has run a safe and predictable campaign on the old right left “x-axis” of culture. Pro gay, pro minority, pro choice versus not that. Yet this spectrum is complicated by a new “y axis” of class that is knowledge worker versus not that.
I worry that her coalition is embracing the “builders” of the Romney coalition by making this election a referendum on culture and globalization rather than pointing to the real and sustained middle class gains that have occurred under this President and could be built out by a President Clinton and a more receptive Congress. She is playing a defensive game without unforced errors and that’s the very recipe for losing, you can just ask Pete Caroll. Sometimes you just gotta run with Lynch even if it makes your boosters unhappy since he’s not as telegenic.
Put Bernie out on the field and send him to Akron and Scranton, Democratic bastions about to be lost to is forever just like West Virginia. And highlight the real economic agenda she has that will improve these people’s lives. That’s how Obama and her husband won campaigns. Obama’s best ads were the workers who Romney fucked over telling the camera their stories, and people who’s policies Obama helped telling theirs. Making this election a referendum on our racial and cultural composition plays into Trumps hands, since sngry white people vote in larger numbers than minorities.
GOP Gains in affiliation
I agree that we need some working class whites.
I’m talking about the deltas. For example, in the above chart, the gain among white men was from 46 to 54 percent from 2008 to 2016. The other demographics stayed the same or declined.
I’m not sure I understand the difference between the “White” row in the top portion of the chart and the “Men” in the “Among whites” portion on the bottom.
Similarly, I’m talking about the following chart:
Racial and ethnic profile of voters
I find the deltas interesting. I think the GOP southern strategy and the voters it attracted can and should be described as “deplorable”, and with a few exceptions (Ken Mehlman’s apology), most Repiblicans were in blissful denial about the covert racial appeals their party made until this year when a savvier pol than the slickest Rubio or best funded Jeb figured out how to just go overt about it and win a strong plurality. We can’t sugarcoat how much of a chickens coming home to roost moment that was.
Where I do think it matters though is that some of these deltas were reliable Democratic constituencies. Realignments are always hard to predict, especially this year. It’s likely we win a lot of typically GOP leaning upscale moderates and even some upscale conservatives running as a the pro-global integration party. I do worry that in doing so we lose downscale whites who were a crucial part of our coalition, and in a world where partisan gerrymandering and unlimited corporate financing exist, are the only means to restoring a Democratic congressional majority that could actually pass progressive legislation.
I think our strategy has to be both/and. Socially inclusive, there were winners and losers in the civil rights, feminist, and gay liberation movements and we have to affirm that the winners were on the right side of history. No turning back the clock, and I would never vote for a Democrat, even a socialist one, proposing those kinds of rollbacks. On the other hand, we have always been the movement of the little guy and economic fairness. I think as our party’s base has become more upscale and professional we lose sight of that.
The Toomey/Connolly battle was an interesting microcosm of this fight. The folks trying to keep housing affordable and the native born to stay in Cambridge largely backed Toomey, while the new folks backed Connolly. My personal preference at the state level is a guy like Connolly who is more reliable on social and economic questions and more open to process reforms. But, I would never have voted for him or his NIMBY faction at the city council level and I’m happy Tim kept his council seat so his faction has a majority. This divide will grow more complicated as the GOP continues to die and our own divisions become more apparent in a post-Trump environment.
The nice thing about the deplorable comment is that anyone who takes umbrage to it basically admits it might describe them. Otherwise, if she’s not talking about you there’s no reason to take offense.
If she said “Catholics,” I’d take umbrage too, even though I’m not the world’s best Catholic.*
*I’m tied for second.
I’d also take offense at denigrating an religious or ethnic group, even one to which I did not belong. She was going after people with certain attitudes which they might want to reconsider.
But what’s really offensive is the grouping. She overloaded her basket.
I’m sorry, I just don’t understand how her grouping is “really offensive”.
She clearly described her criteria — racist, misogynist, xenophobic, etc. I hope we can agree that each is offensive. I don’t see how it it offensive to group those into a “basket” called “deplorables”.
That’s what they are!
But there are millions of loyal Republicans who are going to vote for Trump because they are loyal Republicans. They aren’t racist, sexist, or xenophobic.
I reject all forms of this rhetoric, whether it’s Robert Gibbs talking about “the professional left,” John McCain saying he hates all bloggers, Dick Armey saying New York City isn’t really part of America (he did say that), or Trump calling out Mexicans.
This is a classic “In fighting monsters … ” situation. We can certainly agree that Trump has said many horrible things. She should be better than that — and we can’t hide behind convenient labels. She said half his supporters and she said that deliberately, to be divisive. It’s cynical and it sucks.
I reject the premise that we cannot distinguish voter segments on the basis of clearly identified criteria.
If one third of today’s Donald Trump supporters are “deplorables”, than 67% of them are not. We, including Hillary Clinton and her staff, all agree that those 67% are not racist, sexist, nor xenophobic. I think nearly all of us are capable of making that distinction — I’m not sure why you argue to the contrary.
I fear you paint with far too broad a brush. Nothing in Ms. Clinton’s “deplorables” comment is remotely similar to the items you mention from Mr. Gibbs, Mr. McCain, Mr. Armey, or Mr. Trump.
She is not even talking about statements of Mr. Trump himself. She said that half of his supporters are racist, sexist or xenophobic. Maybe it would have been more accurate to say a third.
Whatever the total is, I see absolutely no harm in calling out that well-defined group for what it is. When Donald Trump identifies an alt-right hate-site with a few thousand followers and re-tweets it to his eleven MILLION followers, Mr. Trump greatly harms our body politic. Those few thousand followers ARE “deplorables”, and Mr. Trump’s actions serve to promote their disgusting attitudes.
I see absolutely NOTHING cynical about it. I see, instead, a candidate who has been criticized for not being candid being VERY candid, while saying something I’m pretty sure each and every one of us has said in public and private — something that is strongly supported by the facts.
The plain fact is that a significant number of Donald Trump supporters are racist, misogynist, xenophobic, and just plain batshit-crazy. Another plain fact is that the GOP has been courting and pandering to those voters for YEARS — at least as long as Barack Obama has been president. A third plain fact is Donald Trump was one of the originators of the “birther” movement.
Those are plain facts that I’m glad are finally being talked about.
Really?
She offered a new form of toxic rhetoric, and she grouped in people who don’t deserve it as being deplorable. What’s NOT offensive about that?
Tangentially you’re overplaying the math. She didn’t mean “half” literally — but she did mean to overstate the number.
And finally this has been talked about throughout this campaign. It’s possible that she said this to change the subject. To distract us.
That’s what HE does. She’s supposed to be the adult in the room.
Last word is yours if you want it. Peace.
Unless you assert that the phrases “professional left”, “bloggers”, “New York City”, or “Mexicans” are similar to “racist, misogynist, and xenophobic”, then the former are not remotely similar to the latter.
There is a difference between groupings like “left-handed”, “red heads”, and “over 5’6″ tall” and groupings like “expresses dislike for blacks”, “says that women should be silent until spoken to”, and “writes that Mexicans are rapists”.
Unless you claim the ability to read her mind, I don’t see any evidence to support your claim that she “did mean to overstate the number”. Frankly, since I suspect she has access to better and more current polling data than any of us, I’d be more inclined to believe HER numbers. The point is that it doesn’t matter.
Similarly, I see no evidence to support your claim that Ms. Clinton made this statement “to distract us”. I don’t see why it is so difficult for us to accept that she candidly spoke the truth as she sees it.
I suggest that she IS the adult in the room, and is behaving that way.
“They aren’t racist, sexist, or xenophobic.” is HRC’s point to some extent. She’s saying they might want to reconsider their party loyalty in this case. OTOH if they stay they can rightly be accused of being fellow travelers of the RSX crowd. Would you let anybody supporting George Wallace in 1968 wiggle out of being labelled racist, or at least too tolerant of racism?
I really don’t.
I agree with your comparison to supporters of George Wallace. It isn’t “cynical” to label at least some of them “racist”.
…in a way that almost leaves the door open that it might be fewer OR it might be more.
Her retraction reminds me of a story I once heard about Abraham Lincoln. There was a certain legislator (I forget which chamber.) about whom Lincoln had a very low opinion. He was ranting to a confidant how this person was a no good thief, liar, corrupt, etc. His friend asked if he really thought this person would steal, to which Lincoln replied, “Well, he probably wouldn’t steal a red hot stove.”
Word of this exchange got back to the legislator in question so he stormed up to the White House to demand Lincoln take back his words. Lincoln thought for a moment and replied, “I believe I said that you would probably not steal a red hot stove – I now take that back!”:)
So let’s put this in some context:
* She prefaces with “just to be grossly generalistic”.
* She talks about there being two baskets: one of deplorables and the other of people who feel let down.
* Regarding the deplorables, she’s pretty specific in her speech and it makes excellent sense in context.
* She says some of those folks are irredeemable, but that implies a good many can be redeemed.
Thank you for providing this quote and context.
To me, it speaks for itself.
Nobody outside of the progressive blogosphere is convinced this isn’t a massive gaffe that will have electoral consequences. My friend at the Brooklyn HQ said everyone was already battered by the health scare, and now this. This is exactly the kind of off script moment she didn’t need to have.
Yes I agree with Tom, Kate, and Christopher that the context makes sense. But we are rational people who understand context and nuance. Most members of the press and the voters that feed off of them aren’t. And remember, at this point it isn’t about those voters for Trump over Hillary but choosing to vote for Stein and Johnson instead. This is the kind of stuff that moves people away from her camp instead of his, and at this point both the third parties are drawing her numbers down rather than his. She cannot afford to alienate anyone at this late stage in the game.
When Mitt Romney made his “47%” comment, he was speaking at a private gathering of the very wealthy, and he was disparaging nearly half of the TOTAL population. He was disparaging them based on their economic status, without regard to any other aspect of their identity.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was speaking publicly and very clearly identified a specific set of people — people who support Donald Trump and who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic”.
To me, there is a WORLD of difference. I frankly don’t see how this offends anybody except:
1. Those who already don’t like her
2. Those who meet the criteria she lays out very clearly
I just don’t agree with your conclusion that this “moves people away from her camp instead of his”. I don’t buy it, and you present no evidence to support it.
I think it’s a double standard. When Donald Trump “speaks candidly”, the media climbs all over it as a “strength” of his. When Hillary Clinton does the same (never mind that her observations are objectively true while his are false), it’s viewed as “gaffe” and a “blunder”.
As far as I’m concerned, the only people Ms. Clinton has alienated with this statement are those who were already against her.
According to most polls. So long as Johnson and Stein are there as off ramps for voters turned off by Hillary who hate Trump, her disapproval rating is just as relevant as is. It’s not the binary choice this year it usually is framed as. I am certainly voting for her and support her and think she’s the best president left standing, but I want her to win, and I’m troubled she’s not running a winning campaign.
Was this meant for the public? This was at a fundraiser with wealthy attendees and she was partly disparaging people who are lower class or lower educated. I get the fact that she was clear the other half of the Trump supporters are genuinely concerned for their futures and persuadable. She is more charitable in her view of his supporters than most posters here, and arguably less so than yours truly if we recall my Venn diagram analogy.
The media isn’t going to change its lousy coverage between now and November, they will keep the false equivalency and all of that nonsense, further reason for her to not fuck up like this or covering up her health scare like she initially did. These own goals have to stop.
I think the essential outrage of the Trump camp is, ironically, exactly the kind of PC, speech-monitoring that they object to. Clinton could really run with this: Trump doesn’t mind reinforcing negative stereotypes about Hispanics but, boy, suggest that the white nationalists from Breitbart are deplorable and they’re all super offended.
…there’s no need to take offense UNLESS you have a guilty conscience about the first paragraph applying to you. Otherwise you can say o no, she’s not referring to me – I belong firmly in her second paragraph.
I personally don’t find the context comforting, but vive la difference.
N/T
…though it was alluded to in the diary, I struggle with the correlation between education level and voting habits or tolerance. I think I understand the theories such as a college education teaches critical thinking and exposes people more to those of other backgrounds and such. However, I’m pretty sure my 18-year-old, pre-college self would not have been any more supportive of Trump or sympathetic to some of his less attractive views of certain groups than my 30-something self with a BA and an MA is.
undeniable. The causation is more complicated and problematic.
The college education may be covering up for pre-existing influences like socioeconomic class; college may have some effect on people’s politics, but it’s hard to separate them from where they started and might have gone anyway.
…we can always hold Trump supporters to the same standard that he holds Mexicans: “Some of them, I assume, are good people.”:)
Are more anti-Hillary than Pro-Trump. I’d guess that about half of my Republican friends are either not voting at all or voting for Clinton and the other half are voting for Trump simply as an “anti-Hillary” message. I see a lot of frustration in them. In some ways, I share that frustration from a different perspective but hope is (again) that once elected HRC dismantles some of the terrible decisions and positions of her husband (and Obama) as she has indicated she will in a few areas. Time will tell. If she does, she’s in for a second term. If not, who knows.
…I would accept (though still not like or agree with) the more anti-Hillary than pro-whomever attitude. However, for whatever faults HRC may have or disagreements on policy a voter might have with her, in this situation they are still in effect saying it would be more tolerable to elect a dangerous, unqualified, bigot. (I’m seriously considering no longer using the GOP nominee’s name and simply referring to him as “The DUB”, acronym for dangerous, unqualified, bigot!)
have historically high negative ratings. Both sides say that the ratings are unfair. I believe that these ratings were earned, not fabricated.
The DUB earns his high negatives every time he opens his mouth. HRC gets hers from a combination of the VRWC and a media out to get her.
…a gender-based double standard when it comes to Hillary.
Where was the double standard there?
…though if EW had ever posed for Cosmo the way Brown did, who knows?
There is no VRWC…..but to her true believers, HRC has convinced them that it exists.
Keep on smoking that Morning-Joe/Fox News weed.
You would see that I get the majority of my news from WBUR/NPR. I watch Morning Joe in the time it takes me to eat breakfast which is usually fifteen minutes or so. Today’s breakfast included two eggs (free range) over easy with hash browns, toast and avocado. (daily menus including caloric intake are listed in the newsletter). As for FOX, I can only take so much as it it quite predictable, don’t you agree?
Sorry, couldn’t resist!:)
…by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons meticulously documents this going back to the Arkansas days, and during the first Clinton presidency you were an adherent to its trope. HRC did nothing to convince me it exists. In fact, when she first used that term in an interview my reaction was, “Please, Mrs. Clinton, don’t tell us you are just NOW figuring this out!”
I do recall HRC blaming the VRWC when the Monica story first arrived. Please, these two commit enough unforced errors. There is no need to “hunt” for a story.
See The vast right-wing conspiracy is still real. Also, the media is really stupid:
1. The VRWC is real, unforced errors or no
2. From the link: “To use an analogy more appropriate to the milieu: scandalism is the journalistic equivalent of spam.”
No such VRW thing happened to President Obama or Michelle….was Obama having sex with interns and the VRWC ignored it? Really? nothing scandalous here? …and what about Senator Warren…Bernie Sanders……and a whole lot of others funny thing that VRWC…it seems more like yet another excuse. I may just be a coffee table, but if the VRWC was a real thing, why do they go after the Clintons and only the Clintons?
…I assume you did not sleep through the Obama’s a secret Muslim or the birtherism directed at both him and Elizabeth Warren. This is a crowd that hates to lose and will stop at nothing to discredit the winner who isn’t one of them. If Sanders had been nominated, and certainly if elected, I have no doubt that his Socialism would provoke irrational attacks and unfortunately I can’t guarantee that anti-Semitism would not have come out of the woodwork too.