This page was last updated on October 4, 2016.
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he [DT] 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.” – Hillary Clinton (HRC) during her speech at a 9/9/16 New York City fundraiser.
That’s some pretty nasty stuff. Full disclosure demands I tell you I’m in HRC’s “basket of deplorables” (BOD). Contrary to HRC’s comment, however, you don’t need to be “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it” to be in her BOD. All you need to do is reject HRC’s leftist view of the world.
Contrary to some reports, HRC did NOT apologize. Here is HRC’s non-apology: “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ – that was wrong.” Yes, folks, you read that right. HRC’s “regret” was only that “half” may not have been accurate. HRC didn’t say whether the correct number in her “basket of deplorables” was more or less than “half.”
In fairness, HRC doesn’t have a high opinion of Bernie Sanders’ supporters either.
None of this should be a surprise. During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Rep. John Murtha (D) said, “There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area.”
Referring to “small towns in Pennsylvania,” then-candidate Barack Obama said, “it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Let’s compare the press’ minimal reaction to HRC’s “basket of deplorables” smear to its misrepresentation of Mitt Romney’s (MR) “47 percent” observation during the 2012 campaign.
At a campaign fund-raiser, an audience member asked MR, “For the last three years, all everybody’s been told is, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.’ How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?” Here’s MR’s response.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those people…we do all these polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4…”
The full transcript of Mr. Romney’s comments as published by Mother Jones.
If you believed the press’ reporting, MR said he didn’t care about the welfare of “47 percent” of the population. As anyone can read, the question and MR’s response was in the context of how to flip voters “who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.” In that context, MR said, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. … And so my job is not to worry about those people … What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center.”
This is SOP during elections. Candidates don’t expend scarce resources on people they know will NEVER vote for them just as candidates don’t expend scarce resources on people they know will ALWAYS vote for them. Instead, candidates target their resources on “fence-sitters.” We see this in every election. Republican candidates spend little time on black voters because they know 80% to 90% of black voters will always vote for the Democrat and they know they can win without black voters. According to FactCheck.org, “No Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15% of the black vote since” 1965. Since 1936 (28%), the most a Republican presidential candidate has gotten was 39% in 1956 for incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower. Likewise, Democrats don’t worry about keeping their promises to black voters because they know they’ll get 80% to 90% of black voters no matter what.
I heard no lefties complain when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) referred to those without medical insurance as “free riders.”
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
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