In an election season filled with gaffes, Secretary Clinton has had only a few serious missteps. Besides her health-related hack-fests, email-related hack-fests, and sext-related Weiner-fests she has done well by staying out of the controversial spotlight, content to let Donald Trump blow up his campaign and party.
The genius of the Clinton campaign and media-assisted hatchet job on Donald Trump was the shaming of the Trump supporters. I personally believe that the polls don't properly reflect Trump's true polling numbers because few people really want to tell a stranger on the phone that, "yes, I'm voting for the guy who mocks the handicapped." Everyone on TV and radio, and I mean everyone except for a few Fox News bobbleheads, tells us that only idiots and racists vote for Trump.
It's a great tactical move because Donald Trump seems to be a willing accomplice in forwarding that narrative.
Secretary Clinton doubled down on this strategy on Saturday by attacking the more, shall we say, sensitivity-challenged constituency of the Donald by floating the idea that "half of his supporters are a basket of deplorables." Wowzers.
"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 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."
Now, I happen to like the term "basket of deplorables" for many reasons. For one, it really rolls off the tongue, and really could be applied to so many groups of people in my life: My local township's administration building, all Waffle House patrons, the Dallas Cowboys... And two, it accurately describes Clinton's intended target, the alt-right, racist, statist goons.
The Republican party is so far gone from the freedom-loving, limited-government-touting, conservative party it once claimed to be. There is virtually no one left in the party that takes personal liberty seriously. They are all statists, just like the Democrats. Oh, they feign interest in personal liberty, but they have been exposed as hypocrites when it comes to the simplest free-speech gestures like refusing to worship the flag.
The deplorable part about Trump supporters is that they actually have a notion that this former Democrat will raise up the common man, set things back to the way they used to be, and restore the greatness of 'murica. What they are really supporting is a fascist who wants more government bureaucracy over issues like immigration and education, promises socialist-style protectionist trade policies, suggests war crimes as viable foreign policy, and advocates violence at his rallies. These are not conservative principles. This is a dictator's wish list.
If you support Trump in these issues, you, in fact, are not a conservative, you are a populist sucker.
The charge that half of Trump's supporters are a basket of deplorables is correct, and generous, at only half. But that basket is a big tent, and all of Clinton's supporters fit neatly inside that basket, too.
Adam lives in South Jersey with his wife and 4 children. He runs 110 Marketing, a digital marketing agency, helping small businesses succeed online.