Hillary Clinton's 'deplorables' speech shocked voters five years ago - some feel it was prescient

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Let's start with the obvious: "Basket of deplorables" is a weird turn of phrase. There are baskets and there are deplorable people, but pairing the two is the oddest of linguistic odd couples.

Hillary Clinton said those three words in the final months of her 2016 presidential campaign, making rhetorical and political history. There were two kinds of Donald Trump supporters, she explained: Voters who feel abandoned and desperate, who she placed in one metaphorical basket, and those she called "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic" - her "basket of deplorables."

Trump - the same man who announced his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" - clutched his proverbial pearls, aghast that his opponent had uttered such a shocking slander. His campaign turned that insult into an asset; supporters wore hats and shirts proudly declaring themselves deplorable. Pundits seized on the phrase, debating who does and doesn't deserve to be called that. Five years later, many believe "deplorables" - figuratively and literally - are here to stay.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clintons-deplorables-speech-shocked-144426533.html

[dalton99a]

1. She was too kind.

[MustLoveBeagles]

2. You read my mind

[oasis]

12. The MAGA hat guy looks constipated.

[betsuni]

4. I can't remember which book I read this in, but her aides had heard her use the basket of

deplorables thing many times in private (there were more categories in the basket). Same thing with Michelle Obama saying it was the first time she was proud of her country. That was fine in front of supporters, but aides worried they were so used to a positive response they might use it in public out of habit, and that's what happened.

[Mike Nelson]

5. Well...

... she was correct. She should have repeated the belief... perhaps with different phrasing each time, but with the same idea... and no apologies.

[Deuxcents]

6. They both had it right

I often wonder what we’d look like as a country if HRC had been our president.

[iemanja]

7. While Trump's campaign was one purposeful gaff after another

Typical double-standard. It didn't help that anti-Hillary leftists picked it up in their quest to see her defeated.

[sop]

8. How about Obama's "..they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.."

Obama's complete statement was also quite prescient:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that 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."

[Scrivener7]

9. That phrase is genius, both for its accuracy and for its imaginative use of language.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

10. Hillary was right on this

Link to tweet

Let’s start with the obvious: “Basket of deplorables” is a weird turn of phrase. There are baskets and there are deplorable people, but pairing the two is the oddest of linguistic odd couples.

Hillary Clinton said those three words in the final months of her 2016 presidential campaign, making rhetorical and political history. There were two kinds of Donald Trump supporters, she explained: Voters who feel abandoned and desperate, who she placed in one metaphorical basket, and those she called “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic” — her “basket of deplorables.”

Trump — the same man who announced his candidacy by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” — clutched his proverbial pearls, aghast that his opponent had uttered such a shocking slander. His campaign turned that insult into an asset; supporters wore hats and shirts proudly declaring themselves deplorable. Pundits seized on the phrase, debating who does and doesn’t deserve to be called that. Five years later, many believe “deplorables” — figuratively and literally — are here to stay.

This is not a cautionary tale: Clinton probably didn’t lose the White House because of a figure of speech. But it’s a lesson in how politicians make unforced errors. And, in a nation where half the country thinks the other half is wrong and possibly even deplorable, it’s about how we talk about each other.

[Beacool]

11. What was so shocking about it?

If anything, she was far too polite.

[tonedevil]

14. Ask so called moderate Democrats?

They couldn't find enough pearls to clutch.

[Beacool]

17. Yeah, I remember.

[Disaffected]

13. Her characterization was understated.

Should have been "basket of despicables".

[romana]

15. Ugh

This article... I read it last night over dinner and couldn't help but notice the author spent 90% of the article raking Clinton over the coals for daring to utter the obvious, before finally getting to what the headline suggests, which is that Clinton was right (as far as many of us are concerned).

The woman cannot win. Even when she's right and says it she's wrong. Meanwhile, Trump was allowed to say every ugly thing imaginable and the media made note of it, but normalized it as just Trump being Trump.

SMH

[lagomorph777]

16. I was only shocked because

...she didn't say "cesspool of deplorables."

[xmas74]

18. How about scumbuckets?

Rat f#ckers?

Hillary was too polite.