Hillary, Trump & the Deplorables

Much has been made of Hillary's basket of deplorables comment regarding Trump supporters. I immediately thought of Mitt Romney's 47% comment in 2012 - one of those things that probably shouldn't have been said, regardless that there is more than a hint of truth behind both statements.

Regarding Hillary's, there is little doubt that Trump has been appealing to an ugly underbelly, but the size of that underbelly is surely not half of his support. However, if one makes one small change to Hillary's statement, exchanging the term "one group" where the word "half" appears, it becomes far harder to take issue with. Here is her entire statement with the proposed change in place. Read it and decide for yourself if it might have been more representative of what's going on than has been reported:

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half one group of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

“But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

Note that she points out they are a small, but thanks to Trump, growing part of the American electorate. Note that she qualifies that she is being "grossly generalistic," indicating the statement is not meant to be considered precise. She also points out these deplorables are not reflective of America. She then goes on to empathize with the core of Trump's support in a way that I doubt even Trump could, explaining their concerns, fears and anxieties. This is hardly the damning statement it's been made out to be - just as Mitt Romney's shouldn't have been four years ago.