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[The Chosen One]

The problem I have with comments like this is that she's running to be President of the United States, that includes everyone even the basket of deplorables.

As others have said, I don't think it's ever a good strategy in the general election to attack large swaths of supporters even if they don't ever plan to vote for you. Strategies like that are partly why our politics are so polarized.

I'm sure Clinton purposely leaked this out for some grander strategy. I just don't agree with it. I think when she does eventually win the election, it's going to make it even harder to lead the country when she's called 1/4 of the population a basket of deplorables.

 

[mjp2417]

In marketing, you're generally supposed to refrain from employing attack tactics on the opposite demographic. Going to these means the other approaches would not be useful (or maybe already expended), due to the quality (or lack thereof) of your target audience (potential voters, in this case).

This is politics, not marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should not desire politics to be marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should desire politics to be the exact opposite of marketing.

 

[Jinkies]

That sounds like something Ayn Rand would say. Clinton Shrugged?

 

[teruterubozu]

This is politics, not marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should not desire politics to be marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should desire politics to be the exact opposite of marketing.

And yet ultimately it's all marketing.

 

[Nikodemos]

And yet ultimately it's all marketing.

^^^

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

This is politics, not marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should not desire politics to be marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should desire politics to be the exact opposite of marketing.

Politics and marketing go hand in hand

 

[mjp2417]

And yet ultimately it's all marketing.

Most of it is, yes. That is not something worth celebrating.

 

[TestOfTide]

The problem I have with comments like this is that she's running to be President of the United States, that includes everyone even the basket of deplorables.

As others have said, I don't think it's ever a good strategy in the general election to attack large swaths of supporters even if they don't ever plan to vote for you. Strategies like that are partly why our politics are so polarized.

I'm sure Clinton purposely leaked this out for some grander strategy. I just don't agree with it. I think when she does eventually win the election, it's going to make it even harder to lead the country when she's called 1/4 of the population a basket of deplorables.

I think the strategy is hopefully to make uneasy Trump supporters become uncomfortable with taking the same side as people like the Alt-Right and social conservatives.

She could even specify what she said by defending the business type conservatives and moderate conservatives, saying stuff like "I'm not talking about the people who just want a good job/business and lower taxes, I'm talking about how [insert poll about Trump supporters here]." It would be similar to how Clinton and Obama have been making sure to separate old-school conservatism from Trump and the Alt-Right.

At the very least, it could increase the number of moderates and business types that see the election as a rejection of Trump and his worst supporters.

 

[teruterubozu]

I think the strategy is hopefully to make uneasy Trump supporters become uncomfortable with taking the same side as people like the Alt-Right and social conservatives.

She could even specify what she said by defending the business type conservatives and moderate conservatives, saying stuff like "I'm not talking about the people who just want a good job/business and lower taxes, I'm talking about how [insert poll about Trump supporters here]." It would be similar to how Clinton and Obama have been making sure to separate old-school conservatism from Trump and the Alt-Right.

At the very least, it could increase the number of moderates and business types that see the election as a rejection of Trump and his worst supporters.

I really don't think any strategy was involved. She just wanted to rile up the audience during the spur of the moment. There's a better way to make the wavering Trump supporter think twice. This is like Obama's guns-Bible-clingers x 10.

 

[giga]

I'm OK with this. We have numerous data from polls that show the heinous views of Trumps supporters, so it's not like this isn't backed by data. Clinton doesn't (and was never going to) need to win them over. She always just needed the Obama vote, and this is caters to that.

 

[teruterubozu]

I'm OK with this. We have numerous data from polls that show the heinous views of Trumps supporters, so it's not like this isn't backed by data. Clinton doesn't (and was never going to) need to win them over. She always just needed the Obama vote, and this is caters to that.

Yup, there was no strategy. It was a rah-rah moment.

 

[Zukkoyaki]

She gave herself an out:

“He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric,” Clinton said. “Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

“That other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change,” Clinton said. “It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different.

“They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead end,” Clinton said. “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

The mistake was saying "half" rather than "many."

 

[Gotchaye]

I'm not sure how a lack of apology makes the issue go away, especially when you have people today who keep saying they wish Hillary would apologize and that would put he issue to bed for them, not realizing she has done so several times already. She's already so often depicted as cold and calculating, I can't see how a firm insistence on doing nothing wrong -- particularly after Comey publicly lambasted her for her email practices -- plays well with people.

I think you're assuming that coverage of Clinton's emails would look pretty similar if she had instead defended what she did. It wouldn't. And as you point out, lots of people aren't paying very close attention such that they're only picking up a vague impression that Clinton did something scandalous with email. The overall flavor of the media coverage matters a lot more than the reporting of specific details. Because Clinton admitted wrongdoing, it's now a non-partisan fact that what she did was wrong, and that's what casual observers are taking from the coverage. If she had not admitted wrongdoing the stories would be much more typical partisan disagreements about how Republicans say that Clinton is a monster and Democrats say she's done nothing wrong - like with Benghazi, which was never much of a problem for Clinton outside of the Republican base. Therefore there just wouldn't be all these people with only a vague impression that Clinton's done something worth apologizing for, if she hadn't apologized.

I don't understand how her having a reputation for being cold and calculating makes apologizing look like a better strategy. What we've actually seen is that her reputation makes people doubt her sincerity, which is the worst possible outcome: she's admitting that she did something wrong but people aren't convinced that she's sorry. I have a very hard time seeing how insisting that she'd done nothing wrong would have been taken as political calculation, just because most people share your perspective on this - most people have this sense that the politically appropriate thing to do when you're caught doing something wrong is to apologize, which is exactly why lots of people doubt politicians' apologies.

Comey's comments didn't have legs. Clinton used them to claim vindication. No charges! She could have done the same if she'd been claiming to have been within bounds all along, and more persuasively. This is easily spun into needing to modernize the way that communication happens at top levels of government rather than as an indictment of Clinton personally. And Comey might not even have felt the need to comment at all if Clinton's emails were not such a hot political issue on account of her admitting wrongdoing.

 

[NHarmonic.]

This is a problematic attitude that simultaneously fails to recognize reality (yes they are part of America too) and denies a fundamental belief in redemption and the ability of people to change for the better. Categorizing people as irredeemable, or reducing them to their worst elements, is itself a cancer.

Good luck trying to change the racism and bigotry trump supporters express daily. The only way society can progress is educating the newer generations on those topics, and leaving behind the older, many times irredeemable ones.

 

[Veelk]

I find it really surprising how many people believe she did something wrong here, politically or otherwise.

Her statement is not wrong. In any other election, it would be an act of demonizing the opposing party, but not this one. Trump has, multiple times, explicitly endorsed such views.

All she did here was condemn what should be condemned and the only people who it really offends are people who have no interest in voting for her anyway.

 

[wildfire]

This is politics, not marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should not desire politics to be marketing. Engaged citizens of a functioning democracy should desire politics to be the exact opposite of marketing.

You sentence doesn't make sense and you don't understand what marketing is.

Marketing at its core is getting out a message so people can be aware of your product and ideas. It applies to anything in life. In this case the product is Hillary or Trump as president and the ideas are whatever the suggest they will do to lead this country.

Most of it is, yes. That is not something worth celebrating.

Marketing isn't fundamentally bad, immoral, unethical or evil. Marketing isn't intrinsically tied to running a business and making money, which I'm guessing is the reason you see marketing as bad, immoral, unethical or evil.

 

[EmpressInYellow]

I find it really surprising how many people believe she did something wrong here, politically or otherwise.

Her statement is not wrong. In any other election, it would be an act of demonizing the opposing party, but not this one. Trump has, multiple times, explicitly endorsed such views.

All she did here was condemn what should be condemned and the only people who it really offends are people who have no interest in voting for her anyway.

Not only has Trump endorsed those views - he hired a white nationalist publisher as his campaign executive.

This is not ambiguous, "he said/she said" stuff, and the media's desire to treat it that way amounts to professional malpractice.

 

[Y2Kev]

I really don't think any strategy was involved. She just wanted to rile up the audience during the spur of the moment. There's a better way to make the wavering Trump supporter think twice. This is like Obama's guns-Bible-clingers x 10.

Where is the evidence for any of this? Someone who is a racist is not going to be a wavering Trump supporter. Someone who could be persuaded by Hillary Clinton to vote for her is not someone who is going to disagree with the notion that 50% of Trump's campaign has been built on utter hate, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, transphobia, etc. There's no point in trying to be "nice" about what's going on with the alt right in Trump's campaign because none of those people are ever going to vote for Clinton ever.

The problem with the Bible clinger gun line is that Obama was still trying to win pieces of a conservative democratic electorate! Clinton does not need these people. She needs to shame them and they need to crawl up into a ball and die.

Good on Hillary for this. I hope she shits on the racist fuckbags every day until she is sworn in as queen of the world.

 

[AxelFoley]

Hindsight bias. We've had a year to grow accustomed to the freak show, but that doesn't mean people saw this coming.

White privilege is a sumbitch. Black folks have delt with overtly racist candidates for decades. Trump ain't the first, and won't be the last.

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

Some people will be all outrage brigade and butthurt about this, some people will say she should be politically correct instead of "offensive" and "triggering," but I for one admire that she's not afraid to tell it like it is.

Yep, this is what is crazy, people are going to get so mad at her for saying something plainly. I thought we weren't supposed to use PC language?

 

[TestOfTide]

I really don't think any strategy was involved. She just wanted to rile up the audience during the spur of the moment. There's a better way to make the wavering Trump supporter think twice. This is like Obama's guns-Bible-clingers x 10.

I disagree. This plays directly into what Clinton, Obama, and others have been doing since the DNC: separating the moderates and business types from Trump and his worst supporters.

They wouldn't have been doing that since the DNC if they didn't think it works at making moderates more comfortable with voting for Hillary.

Obama's "clinger" line was bad because there are numerous devout Christians who actually are not hateful people and there are numerous gun enthusiasts who don't necessarily support the NRA's bullshit.

 

[Arkeband]

The sad thing is this will be seen, by the right, as analogous to Trump's "They're rapists... and some, I assume, are good people."

 

[old manatee]

Well she's not wrong..

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

Trump is polling at 42%.

She is basically calling 42% of the country deplorable. That's not much different from Romney calling 47% of the country lazy.

Lol. As others have pointed out, she is calling half of that deplorable.

21% of America is homophobic, racist, hateful, etc. Yah I think most would agree with that statement, I would actually say it is closer to 25-30% of America.

 

[AxelFoley]

It's amusing to me just how many automatically lump themselves in with the "deplorables" as they take offense.

Something something about hit dogs and hollering.

 

[teruterubozu]

I disagree. This plays directly into what Clinton, Obama, and others have been doing since the DNC: separating the moderates and business types from Trump and his worst supporters.

They wouldn't have been doing that since the DNC if they didn't think it works at making moderates more comfortable with voting for Hillary.

Obama's "clinger" line was bad because there are numerous devout Christians who actually are not hateful people and there are numerous gun enthusiasts who don't necessarily support the NRA's bullshit.

The GOP have been splitting themselves without the DNC's help. Strategy or not, people will interpret this the way they want - it's way too late in the game. With 2 months to go, I highly doubt Hillary will change anyone's mind, especially if those "wavering" voters are already leaning towards Trump.

 

[Kathian]

I'm OK with this. We have numerous data from polls that show the heinous views of Trumps supporters, so it's not like this isn't backed by data. Clinton doesn't (and was never going to) need to win them over. She always just needed the Obama vote, and this is caters to that.

You realise this just shows there are more heinous views in the Trump camp but there are a lot in the Clinton camp as well and that it's not 'half'?

 

[giga]

You realise this just shows there are more heinous views in the Trump camp but there are a lot in the Clinton camp as well and that it's not 'half'?

That's just one data point. I've got more receipts.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...bama-is-a-muslim-born-in-another-country.html

- 66% of Trump's supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim
- 61% think Obama was not born in the United States
- 63% want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/GOPResults.pdf

- 66% in favor of a national Muslim database
- 45% in favor of shutting down all Mosques

 

[TestOfTide]

The GOP have been splitting themselves without the DNC's help. Strategy or not, people will interpret this the way they want - it's way too late in the game. With 2 months to go, I highly doubt Hillary will change anyone's mind, especially if those "wavering" voters are already leaning towards Trump.

She can if even more conservatives endorse her or say they won't support Trump.

Right now the race has been tightening with many conservatives no longer saying they are supporting Clinton, but at the peak of the gap you had as many as ~12% of GOP voters openly saying they will vote for Clinton.

 

[teruterubozu]

She can if even more conservatives endorse her or say they won't support Trump.

Sure, but ultimately this will work both ways and the net is probably null. So in the larger scheme, it's probably not a big deal and just another nutty day in this election.

 

[mjp2417]

You sentence doesn't make sense and you don't understand what marketing is.

Marketing at its core is getting out a message so people can be aware of your product and ideas. It applies to anything in life. In this case the product is Hillary or Trump as president and the ideas are whatever the suggest they will do to lead this country.





Marketing isn't fundamentally bad, immoral, unethical or evil. Marketing isn't intrinsically tied to running a business and making money, which I'm guessing is the reason you see marketing as bad, immoral, unethical or evil.

My sentence actually makes perfect sense, but yours doesn't by any acceptable standard of the English language. You happen to believe that the ideas encoded in a candidate for public office are comparable to the ideas encoded in a Big Mac. I don't. I believe that hoping for an equivalence between these two as a normative standard is profoundly cynical and damaging to any sense of a functioning democracy (and most democratic theorists happen to agree with me!). Apparently, you feel differently. And no, I don't believe that marketing is fundamentally evil; however, I do believe it can be used towards evil ends when the product of said marketing actually intends evil ends (unlike a Big Mac). Apparently, you feel differently.

 

[Kathian]

That's just one data point. I've got more receipts.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...bama-is-a-muslim-born-in-another-country.html

- 66% of Trump's supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim
- 61% think Obama was not born in the United States
- 63% want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/GOPResults.pdf

- 66% in favor of a national Muslim database
- 45% in favor of shutting down all Mosques

This is a poll of GOP Trump supporters; again though looking at your original data, likely you'd fine the some of these people on the Democratic side. Which is why its better to challenge them than simply put them down as lost causes.

 

[giga]

This is a poll of GOP Trump supporters; again though looking at your original data, likely you'd fine the some of these people on the Democratic side. Which is why its better to challenge them than simply put them down as lost causes.

I'd argue the majority of Trump supporters are part of the GOP, so it's a relevant statistic. I don't dispute that there are "deplorables" on the other side, but not nearly to the extent of Trump supporters.

 

[Arrogant Bastard]

This is a poll of GOP Trump supporters; again though looking at your original data, likely you'd fine the some of these people on the Democratic side. Which is why its better to challenge them than simply put them down as lost causes.

If 61% think that Obama was not born in the US or that we should have a fucking registry for Muslims they are a lost cause.

 

[What did he mean by this?]

I was with her until that "Racism is Not America" bs

ha

 

[sprsk]

No lies detected.

 

[Tamanon]

Time to clutch our pearls over this election cycle's bitter bible-clinging.

 

[kess]

Marketing isn't fundamentally bad, immoral, unethical or evil. Marketing isn't intrinsically tied to running a business and making money, which I'm guessing is the reason you see marketing as bad, immoral, unethical or evil.

Depends. Is all marketing manipulative? Is all marketing telling the truth? People have a right to be cynical, especially after being sold a bad product.

 

[Y2Kev]

Time to clutch our pearls over this election cycle's bitter bible-clinging.

Right wing bitter clinging proud clingers

 

[wumster3000]

No need for a facts check.

 

[sprsk]

Right wing bitter clinging proud clingers

Can't wait for the Palin response.

 

[HiredN00bs]

She's 150% right.



these people are unsalvageable, closet, or blatant racist/misogynists that live on hate. Nobody will ever win them over. They will honestly need to age out and die before they change an opinion.

People who have this judgemental, defeated, absolutist, unempathetic attitude and shy away from the hard work of reaching out to the lost just can't be convinced otherwise. Just kidding.

 

[ahoyhoy]

Not a wise attack. Best to attack the candidate and leave his/her supporters alone.

.

Ratchet up the rhetoric like this and it can come back to bite you. Keep the attacks to the candidate and hope people connect the dots on their own about their supporters.

 

[Sickboy007]

You only have to see the increase in traffic on actual neo-nazi sites. It's tragic but it's true.

 

[Ganzlinger]

Dumb move, Clinton.

 

[BriGuy]

She may be right, but that's an extremely dumb comment for her to make, and I'm all but certain she's going to pay for it in the polls. The added nuance of "half" or "some" or whatever percentage of his supporters is meaningless; it's not going to be what gets focused on and repeated and chopped into soundbites for attack ads. These kinds of stupid, unforced errors are going to cost us the election.

 

[phanphare]

well she's not lying but I don't think this should be coming from her

 

[TumblingHippo]

One side actually says/implies/does raciest things: Eh, give them the benefit of the doubt. They'll pivot.

Other side calls them actual racists: BLUNDER OF THE CENTURY ELECTION IS OVER

 

[Kyzer]

Fuck this shit, time to stop coddling willful ignorance

theyre not being willfully ignorant, thats the whole point of politics. hillary saying they are is a very bad move politically. shes not america's mom, shes not here to reprimand or scold people.

quite frankly this is some shit I would expect trump to say

disrespectful

One side actually says/implies/does raciest things: Eh, give them the benefit of the doubt. They'll pivot.

Other side calls them actual racists: BLUNDER OF THE CENTURY ELECTION IS OVER

while I doubt this is the blunder of the century, do you not see the problem with her calling a side racist? its a sweeping generalization. its like saying all of hillarys supporters are voting for her cuz shes a woman.


this is more like when Obama basically said the other side was clinging to their guns

 

[bob_arctor]

Dumb move, Clinton.

She may be right, but that's an extremely dumb comment for her to make, and I'm all but certain she's going to pay for it in the polls. The added nuance of "half" or "some" or whatever percentage of his supporters is meaningless; it's not going to be what gets focused on and repeated and chopped into soundbites for attack ads. These kinds of stupid, unforced errors are going to cost us the election.

well she's not lying but I don't think this should be coming from her

Ah, the sky is falling! This won't hurt her much, if at all, and it definitely won't cost her the election. My biggest hope is that maybe the media will actually examine enabler sites like Brietbart and their direct involvement with the Trump "campaign." Expose all that ugliness.

Edit: "Disrespectful"!?? Hahaha GAF, you are precious.