A Deplorable Basket Case

The right-wing outrage du jour this weekend is Hillary Clinton daring to tell the truth about Trump supporters and the Village media is shocked, shocked to the point of needing multiple fainting couches.

Hillary Clinton told an audience of donors Friday night that half of Donald Trump's supporters fall into "the basket of deplorables," meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. 

In an effort to explain the support behind Trump, Clinton went on to describe the rest of Trump supporters as people who are looking for change in any form because of economic anxiety and urged her supporters to empathize with them. 

"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said. "Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it." 

She added, "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." 

Clinton then said some of these people were "irredeemable" and "not America." 

Trump and Republicans quickly pounced on the remarks, which drew comparisons to President Barack Obama's comments about clinging to "guns and religion" at a 2008 campaign fundraiser and Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remark in 2012. 

"Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!" Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

And the false outrage from this will last for some time, I figure.  People still identify as "bitter clingers" after then candidate Obama made that statement eight years ago, even though it was taken way out of context.

But there's no taking this out of context.  Clinton straight up told the truth here about the racism, xenophobia, misogyny and hatred fueling Trump, and his supporters are furious today.  The problem is a lot of Village pundits are furious too, scolding Clinton for "mocking the electorate" which makes you wonder why they're so eager to defend Trump.

This is a guy who has made sweeping generalizations about black folk, Latinos, women, immigrants, Muslims, and has done it time and time again, but we're all mad at Clinton.

I see.