This has turned into a major pet peeve of mine, whether it occurs in the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media, blog posts, or blog comments — failing to recognize and acknowledge that Clinton’s remark clearly and specifically defined whom she was calling “deplorable”:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. 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 have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.
“But the other basket, the other basket, and I know 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 who are people who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are 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 heroine [sic — or much worse, to heroin], feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
(Clearly, from this actual context, ” — you name it” is a catchall for “and any other form of bigotry I left out of my list”.)
And really, Clinton just stated the obvious, which is why none of the media vapors and rightwing faux-outrage over it even tried to take issue with what she actually asserted. That is, notable for their absence from the ensuing tsunami of Villager tut-tutting and Trumpista faux-outrage were attempts by anyone anywhere (well, excluding the Stormfront et al. fringe) to make either the case that:
1. There are no Trump supporters who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it”; nor even that these bigots do not comprise a substantial subset, at the least, of Trump supporters. (A case no one seriously attempts to make because it’s transparently preposterous on its face.)
Or
2. Actually defending (or pretending to) racism, sexism, etc. as something other than deplorable.
Or
3. Claiming that none of those “deplorables” are irredeemable (though that one imo might, in fact, be a makeable case at least in theory).
No, essentially all the media/center-left criticism took some form other than disputing the validity (obvious, imo) of what she actually asserted (excepting “half”), e.g., “politically stupid”, etc.
While, quite predictably, Trump and his Trumpistas just baldly lied that she’d called all his supporters “deplorables”, disappearing how she specifically defined “deplorables”.
(A personal anecdotal case in point. One day most weeks I and some tennis buddies have beers after playing. Right after Clinton’s “deplorables” remark, we were at one guy’s house having beers and watching some sporting event on the teevee when a GOP political ad came on, prompting the one Trump supporter there to refer to himself as being one of Clinton’s “deplorables”.
I bit my tongue just in time to keep “Really, ‘Charlie’? So which ‘deplorable’ bigot category are you self-identifying as: racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, or ‘other’?” from exiting my mouth. Cuz what would be the point?)
Now, there are plenty of valid avenues for criticizing Clinton for that remark, including the arguably sloppy “half” characterization (which she subsequently repudiated and apologized for) — though to be fair, she did issue the “just to be grossly generalistic” caveat right up front, something likewise generally disappeared from “reporting” about this.
From a purely practical, cynically political perspective, though, the most condemnable thing about it was providing an opening for the utterly, predictably bad “reporting” by media and dishonest reaction by Trumpistas (and even some “friendly fire”) determinedly disappearing the fact that — and how — Clinton actually defined “deplorables”.
Update [2016-10-3 17:9:25 by oaguabonita]: She was right! What she (clearly, specifically) identified as “deplorable” is in fact deplorable!