In her newly released book Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty, Hillary Clinton revisits her controversial 2016 “basket of deplorables” smear against Donald Trump supporters. Clinton acknowledges that the phrase was “bad politics” but fundamentally accurate and, if anything, not harsh enough.
“I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia—you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug,” she writes. “It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6,” she argues.
“The masks have come off, and if anything, ‘deplorable’ is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters.”
The “deplorables” comment quickly became a badge of honor among Trump supporters, who showcased it on T-shirts and hats.
Some senior Democrats have not learned the lessons from Clinton dismissing millions of Americans as “deplorables” and “irredeemable.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), still one of the party’s most influential politicians, recently said that 30 percent of Republicans will never vote Democrat because “they just have a different orientation toward women, people of color, LGBTQ, you know, they just are not ever going to be there.”
Pelosi also said “very, very rich people” would not support her party. However, research suggests America’s “elite one percent”—people living in urban centers with postgraduate degrees and household incomes over $150,000—lean overwhelmingly Democratic, while America’s hardest workers lean heavily towards Trump.
Image via Jewish Democratic Council of America
