Hillary Clinton insults half of Trump supporters calling them every name in the book.

Hillary Clinton at the event where she said many of Donald Trump's supporters are irredeemable. AP. 

Hillary Clinton insulted Donald Trump supporters at a fundraiser yesterday. NBC News. At a LGBT fundraiser for her campaign Hillary Clinton went beyond criticizing Donald Trump himself and called many of his supporters a "basket of deplorable's". Though Clinton has insinuated that Donald Trump is a racist, xenophobic, sexist, anti-Muslim, anti-woman and anti-LGBT, Clinton went far beyond that and implied that as many as half of Trump's supporters are as well. She also said that conversion therapy, the extremely controversial practice of treating homosexuals and other LGBT people in hopes of "curing" them is an appropriate response to Trump supporters and that they need "interventions". She also said that many of Trump supporters are "irredeemable". 

My Comment:

Not a wise move by Hillary Clinton to say the least. I am sure that this was an effort to motivate her base, but I think it is just going to motivate Trump supporters. Those were some pretty offensive insults, none of which would even be true if they were directed at Trump himself, but she went after his supporters and hard. That's usually a bad idea. Ted Cruz did the same thing in the primaries and it burned him pretty badly. 

This is yet another attempt by the Clinton camp to link Trump's supporters to the "alt-right". I talked about the alt-right before, and back then I said that the term was almost worthless because of how many groups it actually represents. Though there are a few people on the alt-right that are pretty terrible, they are a minority among a minority, depending on how you define the alt-right. Even if you narrow it down to something as small as chan culture, you will still see a lot of diversity of opinion and exaggeration. If you expand it to everyone on the right that's currently supporting Donald Trump, that's millions of people with incredibly diverse beliefs and priorities. Given that Trump has quite a few LGBT, Hispanic, Black and even Muslim supporters, it's also fairly ironic. 

Will linking Trump to the alt-right work? It could have if she had just focused on him. After all, painting someone as a bigot has worked for the left in the past. But Clinton painted half the nation as irredeemable racists and bigots, just chomping at the bit to oppress people. That is going to piss a lot of people off, including me. 

Most people actually know a Trump supporter or two. Not everyone lives in a bubble, though I have to admit I don't really know any open Clinton supporters personally. But I do know quite a few Trump supporters, and they all have different reasons for voting for him. Some of them just hate Hillary Clinton. Some of them are die hard Republicans who would vote for anyone with an (R) behind their name. Some are cops who are tired of the left waging war on them. Some, like me, are sick and tired of being called every name in the book by the left and wants to vote for the one guy that seems somewhat immune to it. 

You know who I don't know that is supporting Trump? Bigots. To be fair, I don't know a lot of people that are openly bigoted, but the few of them that I have met are Democrats who are presumably not voting for Trump. Of course, to the left these days it's easy for them to call everyone on the right racist while ignoring the fact that they have racist supporters too. 

Some are saying that this is the "47%" moment for Hillary Clinton. If you remember, Mitt Romney insulted 47% of the population of America by pointing out that that's the number of people that don't pay any taxes. It was a very bad moment for him because it made people think that he really did hate poor people and wasn't going to look out for their interests. Some people say it cost him the election. I don't know if I would go that far, he was pretty bad on the campaign trail too, but it really did not help things for him at all. 

You could say the same thing about Hillary Clinton here. To be fair, she only bashed half of Trump's supporters, though she did seem to imply the rest of them were mentally ill, so the number of people by pure numbers insulted is less. But it does seem to me that she does not care one bit about the people that are voting against her. I know that has been the status quo since Obama has been in office, but she should at least try to pretend to care about red tribe right? 

Back when the Mitt Romney video leaked, I really didn't understand why people were upset. I think I do now. I am guessing a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters are thinking the same thing I was back then. What's the big deal? Or even worse, they think she's completely right and there is nothing wrong with thinking half the country is evil. Those people may be in for a shock if this story gains traction. People do not like being insulted this way, and I think it may have an impact. I was wrong to ignore Romney's flub back then and I think Democrats and Clinton supporters would be unwise to do the same thing here. 

Still, there are a few things that could make the impact not be as bad as I would hope. For one thing, those of us on the right are used to being called every ugly word in the dictionary. I've been called racist several times, once just because I was a Criminal Justice major in college and another time for calling leftist political violence counter productive. Even though it is unusual for a candidate to imply that half the country is racist, it's pretty standard on the internet. We are all used to it by now.  

Secondly, Clinton does have the media in the bag. This story dropped on a weekend and though many media outlets were covering it, including the NBC source I used, I don't expect the story to last into next week unless something else happens. Though the media did cover it, I doubt anyone other then right wing sources will continue to talk about this. Unlike the 47% comment that Romney had, this story will be buried soon. 

On the other hand, I do think this motivates Trump's base a bit more then they would be already. Turnout is key in elections and you should underestimate the "FU" factor when it comes to elections. I know that come hell or high water I will be in the voting booth on election day if I am physically capable of doing so. And I will be voting against Hillary Clinton. I was never going to support her anyways, but now it's personal. She just insulted not only myself, but many of my friends and family as well.