You have it backwards. She was trying to differentiate his racist support from his "we're worried about our jobs" support. Read the text of her speech.

"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. [...] But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but 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. 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 heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

EDIT: The transcript I pulled this from: http://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorable...

Imagine you're a poorly educated working class person who's struggling.

You hear both candidates speak. Hillary says "We need to have empathy for those people," a phrase that's clearly referring to you by the surrounding context. She's obviously not talking to you, she's talking about you.

Trump says "I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED!!! And I know you're struggling and I'm going to fix it!"

He's talking directly to you.

Who do you vote for?

Does it even matter what she says at that point about empathy? No. She clearly doesn't even consider the possibility that a poorly educated person who's leaning Trump would even be in the audience. Does "We need to understand you people and empathize with you" sound inclusive? If you're in Camp Hillary it might. If you're not in Camp Hillary, well, those words are pretty much an admission that the in-crowd doesn't relate to you at all, or consider you one of them.

And that's the complete arrogance and obliviousness that allowed the left to lose an election to an extremely weak opponent.

I feel like you're inventing a story here where one candidate talked to people but the other talked about them. It doesn't hold up. Not just beacuse none of your quotes were actually quotes. Nor just because Trump voters had a higher-than-average income.

"We need to have empathy for those people" because of "those people" is exclusive, but "We need to understand you people and empathize with you" is also exclusive. Is it the "you people"? Or should she have lied and said "I'm one of you". I don't know if it matters because she didn't say that anyway. Then the "I love the poorly educated", which is also a "[them]" is inclusive.

"She clearly doesn't even consider the possibility that a poorly educated person who's leaning Trump would even be in the audience." She made that speech at a fundraiser. Why would she speak to someone who maybe was there isntead of the people that were? What did Trump say at his private fundraisers? Should we compare stump speeches?

Did your hypothetical voter hear Trumps speeches where he constantly mentions how rich he is, how much money he makes in real estate deals, and all the fancy stuff he does? How many golf courses did he talk about in a day? I don't see why it's arrogant to not believe in Trump as a populist. Or to see irony in the claim that one candidate better cares about, relates to, or understands the poorly educated when his party wants to limit social safety nets, unions, health care, and the ability of poor people and minorities to vote.

As to the left's obliviousness, our candidate get more votes.

There's no "story," this is a post-mortem. She lost, we get to figure out why. That takes a bit of humility.

My lasting impression here was that the DNC's goal was not to win the presidency, it was to get Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency. There's a difference, and in this case, it was a vital one. During the Democratic caucuses I watched a lot of people vote for Hillary because it was assumed "she has the best chance of beating Trump." But the numbers at the time didn't even bear it out, and here we are.

What bit the DNC in the ass in a big way last night was that they completely miscalculated the importance of a large portion of the electorate that Trump actively courted, nominated a candidate that had almost no chance of swaying these voters, and ignored and denigrated them for the entire campaign. Whoops. Calling this a 'blind spot' would probably be an understatement.

Michael Moore called this one months ago. I hope the lesson of this election is not lost on anyone.

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

>What bit the DNC in the ass in a big way last night was that they completely miscalculated the importance of a large portion of the electorate that Trump actively courted, nominated a candidate that had almost no chance of swaying these voters, and ignored and denigrated them for the entire campaign. Whoops. Calling this a 'blind spot' would probably be an understatement.

Yes to humility. I'm fine with the party doing some self-analysis and changing how they do things. I just don't think the math supports this narrative. Did Trump actually bring in new voters to his party? That was the story in the primary (and apparently now) but I don't think the data matched it then. It seems he did well with Republicans. Would any Democratic candidate have swayed rural white voters, or any white voters?

And suppose we take away the arguments about Trump's racist stuff. Say all these portion of voters really did vote because they had been ignored and are worried about their jobs and economic uncertainty. I don't think Trump's stated policies will help them. I think they're wrong to think trade policies and immigration are causing their problems. And if the story about this populist uprising is true, these don't seem to want a social safety net, expanded access to health care, environmental regulation, or unions, as much as they want a wall to keep out Mexicans. The DNC doesn't need to sway these voters. They're Republicans.

And finally, she got more votes. How terrible could Hillary have been if she got more votes? We need to keep this election in perspective. It was very very close. There are still a lot of people that want Democrats in office.

She called 50% of Trump's supporters racists, homophobes, etc. How is that not exactly what the quote is made out to be? If she had said "some of Trump's supporters" you'd be right.

You'd think by now politicians --- you have one job! --- would learn that this message always loses. Attack the candidate, never the candidate's supporters. Trump offers a corollary, which is simply "if you're attacking someone other than the candidate, just be super specific about who you're attacking".

The "deplorable" thing cost Clinton. The attacks on the Khan family don't seem to have cost Trump much at all.

I'll agree that she worded that poorly and was unkind. Even Clinton apologized for that part. " “I regret saying ‘half’ -- that was wrong." [1] That's one of the differences between the candidates.

In support of her defense of the statement: "to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half". That sounds very vague to me. She even referred to "you could put half" as "grossly generalistic".

Then in the rest of her statement she got to empathizing with the people that aren't voting because we have too many Muslims and brown people make me squeeamish.

[1]: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/10/clinton-says-regr...

If you say something like that and expect anyone to keep listening or reading after your first sentence, you have no business -- or future -- in politics.

Psh. Lots of politicians have said far worse and been elected. Example: Donald Trump.

He didn't have to outrun the proverbial bear. He only had to outrun Hillary.

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you agreeing with me that your previous statement is wrong?

It would sound much nicer if she had left that basket of deplorable out of the statement.

Thanks, I had never read the full quote. That seems much more reasonable than what everyone made it out to be.

Be sure to also read her State Department emails that were leaked. Paints a very different picture of her than what headlines do.

Reminds me of romneys infomous 47% remark. Seems like there is a geuine disconnect btwn current pollitical class and the "silent majority"

Hillary won the popular vote - I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "silent majority" for a candidate that lost the popular vote?

We don't use the popular vote for anything in the US. It's a completely meaningless metric.

Your statement does not provide support for their being a silent majority for Trump. But I hope people consider what you said when someone talks about how Hillary or the media or whatever is part of the corrupt "Establishment".

It doesn't matter whether there was a "silent majority" for Trump or anyone else because we don't attach any importance to a majority vote at the national level. Nor should we. If we did, three metropolitan areas in New York and California would dictate the outcomes of our Presidential elections.

But I hope people consider what you said when someone talks about how Hillary or the media or whatever is part of the corrupt "Establishment".

That, on the other hand, is no longer questionable.

https://www.google.com/#safe=off&q=pied+piper+candidates+wik...

Good thing the rules are agreed to before the competition. BTW, the popular vote hasn't been completely counted, and probably never will be. Absentee ballot, which generally favor Republicans, will not be counted in any of the states that didn't have a close margin of error(read: most of the red states). In a close election like this, you really have no ground complaining about popular vote.

Very true and worth remembering for anyone planning to run for elected office in the future.

It's interesting reading through comments and seeing "them" mentioned. A lot of it will be because HN has a lot of international posters, but descriptions of Clinton voters don't read like this.