If I see the phrase basket of deplorables, I
am willing to bet you have an immediate, almost
visceral reaction. Absolutely. It doesn't matter
who you voted for or even if you follow politics.
Those words, they just, they take you right back
to 2016. It's arguably the phrase that defined
that entire election, maybe that whole era of
politics. It's definitely in the Hall of Fame.
But the thing is, and this is what we need to
get into, for most people, the memory just stops
there. It stops at the headline, at the insult
itself. And that's a huge missed opportunity
to understand what was really going on. It is.
Which is exactly why we're here. For this deep
dive, we've gone through the speech transcripts,
campaign memos, post -election analyses, all
of it. Right. And look, we're not here to relitigate
2016. No, that's been done to death. Our mission
today is really to dissect this as a phenomenon.
We want to understand how a strategy that's designed
to divide your opposition actually ends up unifying
them. How does an insult, something meant to
shame people, become a badge of honor? Right.
Usually you insult someone, they get mad. In
this case, they went out and bought T -shirts.
It's fascinating. Exactly. So let's get into
it. The scene, the context. It's everything here.
It's September 9th, 2016. Where is Hillary Clinton?
She's in New York City. And the venue is really
crucial. She's at an LGBT campaign fundraiser
at Cipriani Wall Street. Cipriani Wall Street.
So an opulent place. Oh, yeah. It's a former
bank building, you know, massive marble columns,
very high society, very wealthy and crucially,
very friendly room for her. Barbra Streisand
had just performed. OK, so that's key. This is
not a rally in Ohio with a mixed crowd. This
is a private event with donors. Precisely. And
that dictates the tone. Right. Politicians tend
to speak a little more loosely in those settings.
They feel safe, like they're among friends. The
filter comes off. And she gets up on stage, starts
talking about Trump supporters and decides to
categorize them. This is the moment. But what's
so interesting is how she starts the sentence,
something nobody ever remembers. She almost gives
herself a legal out. She says, and this is a
direct quote. to just be grossly generalistic.
She's literally flagging, hey, I'm about to paint
with a really broad brush here. And then she
drops the line. And she drops it. You could put
half of Trump supporters into what I call the
basket of deplorables. The word half. Every time
I read that, it's the word half that just stops
you in your tracks. It's the dynamite in the
sentence. It really is. It's a mathematical claim.
It's not some. It's not a few. If Trump gets
60 million votes, she is literally talking about
30 million people. That specific number half
is what made it sound like a clinical diagnosis,
not just some off -the -cuff observation. And
she didn't stop there. She defined what she meant.
She gives a list. A whole list, she says. racist,
sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.
Wow. And she makes this really interesting point
about the Internet, which, looking back, is so
prescient. She said Trump had lifted them up,
that he'd given a platform to websites that used
to have maybe 11 ,000 readers and now had 11
million. She was trying to draw a direct line
between the darker corners of the Internet, the
alt -right, and the mainstream Republican ticket.
Exactly. She calls them irredeemable. Says they
are not. And that's the soundbite that played
on a loop for the next two months. But, and this
is the part that I think will surprise a lot
of people, there was a second basket. The forgotten
basket. I honestly don't think I'd retain this
part at all until we started prepping for this.
It's almost completely written out of the story.
Immediately after the deplorables part, she pivots
to the other half of his supporters. And the
tone just completely shifts, doesn't it? A complete
180. She stops talking about racism and starts
talking about, you know, economics, about people
who feel the government and the economy have
left them behind. She gets surprisingly specific
and empathetic. Very. She mentions people seeing
their jobs disappear. And then she uses this
incredibly specific, tragic image. Losing a child
to the heroin epidemic. Yeah, that's not an insult.
That's trying to connect. It really is. And she
concludes by saying these people are desperate
for change and that, quote, those are people
we have to understand and empathize with. OK,
so if she has this whole nuanced theory, basket
A is the fringe, basket B is the economically
anxious. Why did it blow up so badly? Was the
deplorables line just a slip of the tongue? No,
all the evidence suggests this was not an accident,
not a gaffe in the traditional sense. She'd actually
been road testing this idea for weeks. Really?
This is a planned strategy. It seems so. Just
a few weeks earlier in a speech in Reno, she
talked about Trump helping a radical fringe take
over the GOP, and she explicitly mentioned the
alt -right. The day before this fundraiser, she
did an interview on Israel's Channel 2 and used
the exact same two big baskets metaphor. So it
was a deliberate strategy. What was the goal
then? Why would you want to insult millions of
potential voters? It's a classic divide and conquer
play. You have to remember, in 2016, there were
a lot of moderate establishment Republicans who
were deeply uncomfortable with Trump. The never
Trumpers. The Never Trumpers, exactly. The campaign
strategy was to try and peel them away, to separate
those everyday Republicans from the alt -right.
So force them to look at the people in that first
basket and say, I'm not with them. Right. She
was trying to shame them out of that coalition.
And she was bringing proof, too. In her speeches,
she was talking about Steve Bannon running the
campaign, his ties to Breitbart News. She was
even reading Breitbart headlines from the stage.
What kind of headlines? I mean, things like,
would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?
Wow. OK. Yeah. So she's holding that up and basically
saying, see, this isn't your grandfather's Republican
Party. This is something else, something darker.
But the whole strategy depends on the audience
actually accepting your categories. And that's
where it all fell apart. Because of that one
word. Half. Half. The very next day, the backlash
is huge. She has to issue a statement. She does.
But let's be precise about what she regretted.
She said she regretted saying half. She admitted
that was wrong. But she stood by the core sentiment.
She doubled down on condemning Trump for amplifying
hateful views and voices. But it was too late.
The horse wasn't just out of the barn. It was
leading the parade. The GOP pounced. It was the
perfect gift. It was the rallying cry they'd
been waiting for. Trump's reaction was smart.
He didn't just attack her back. He positioned
himself as a defender. A brilliant populist move.
He said, you know, while my opponent slanders
you, I call you hardworking American patriots.
It led him pivot from being the aggressor to
being the protector of the common person against
this coastal elite. And Mike Pence, his running
mate, took it even further. Pence said that showing
that kind of disdain from millions of Americans
disqualifies her from being president. It just
fed perfectly into the narrative they were building,
that the establishment doesn't just disagree
with you, they actively despise you. Right. Kellyanne
Conway was all over it, saying Clinton had insulted
the very people she promised to uplift. It confirmed
every suspicion they wanted voters to have about
her. But here's the twist. This is what makes
this story so unique. Usually when a politician
insults a group, that group gets defensive. They
deny it. They say, how dare you? Exactly. That's
not me. But Trump supporters, they didn't run
from it. They embraced it. This is that idea
of reappropriation, right? Taking back a slur.
A perfect example, a stigma reversal. Yeah. You
know, like activists reclaiming the word queer
or even what happened with nasty woman later
in that same election. They took deplorables,
a word meant to cast them out, and they wore
it like armor. And that moment in Miami, I remember
watching that live on TV and just thinking, this
is political theater on a whole other level.
The Les Miserables parody. Yes. Trump walks on
stage and the music playing is, do you hear the
people sing? From Limby. Which is, you know,
a song about French peasants rising up against
the monarchy. The irony of a billionaire using
it. It's thick, yeah. But the giant screen behind
him, it doesn't say, make America great again.
It says in that font, le déploie. It was genius.
It turned an insult from an elite into a banner
of rebellion. Suddenly, they weren't deplorables.
They were revolutionaries. And the internet,
the very place she was criticizing, just exploded.
Oh, the memes were everywhere. Roger Stone, Donald
Trump Jr., they shared that parody movie poster,
styled after the action movie The Expendables.
But it was called The Deplorables. And it had
Pepe the Frog on it. Yeah, which was a direct
nod to the alt -right. It was. They were basically
saying to Clinton, You think we're trolls? You
think we're fringe? Fine. We are. And we're proud
of it. It completely neutralized the shame she
was trying to create. So instead of shaming them
away from the alt -right, she pushed them right
into its arms, metaphorically speaking. The campaign
started selling official merchandise. Proud to
be deplorable, it became an identity. And it
all culminated in the deplorable. The deplorable.
Right before the inauguration. January 2017.
a black tie victory lap at the National Press
Building of all places. Named after the insult
that was supposed to destroy them, they were
toasting with champagne to being deplorable.
So let's analyze this. Did it actually cost her
the election? I mean, that feels too simple,
but it's the question everyone asks. It's the
million -dollar question, and analysts are still
fighting about it. The most obvious parallel
everyone draws is with Mitt Romney in 2012. The
47 % gaffe. Exactly. Romney had a private fundraiser
saying 47 percent of Americans are dependent
on government and see themselves as victims.
And it just fed this narrative that he was an
out of touch rich guy. It confirmed a suspicion
people already had. Political attacks really
stick when they do that. And the argument is
that basket or deplorables did the exact same
thing to Clinton. It confirmed the suspicion
that she was an elitist who looked down on working
class people. You also mentioned a historical
parallel I'd never heard of, the vermin comment
in Britain. Right. The columnist Charles Moore
pointed this out. Back in 1948, a very famous
labor politician, Nye Bevan, called the Conservative
Party lower than vermin. That's pretty harsh,
yeah. Caused a huge scandal. And what did the
conservatives do? They formed a vermin club.
They made little lapel pins with rats on them.
It's the same human impulse. You insult us. We
form a club. But what about the actual data from
2016? Did this comment move votes? Well, Diane
Hessen was tracking undecided voters for the
Clinton campaign. She was in focus groups with
them every single day. And she said that after
that comment, quote, All hell broke loose. All
hell broke loose. Yeah. For her, that was the
moment she saw the largest single shift of undecided
voters away from Clinton and toward Trump. So
it wasn't just about firing up his base. It was
about pushing the undecideds away from her. That's
her argument. And even her own campaign manager,
Robbie Mook, later admitted it definitely could
have alienated people. Clinton herself, in her
book What Happened, basically called it a political
gift to Trump. That's a huge admission. It is.
But... To be fair, there is a counter view. Courtney
Weaver at the Financial Times argued it's foolish
to pin an entire election loss on one phrase.
There was the Comey letter, the emails, the economy.
A million things. Sure. But even she said, well,
it certainly didn't help. There's that one take
from the political scientist Charles Murray.
He goes really big with his analysis. Who does?
He suggested that one comment might have changed
the history of the world. That feels a little
dramatic. It sounds it. But his argument is interesting.
He says it wasn't just about the votes. It was
about crystallizing the entire narrative of the
culture war. The idea of the new upper class
looking down on everyone else. It drew a line
in the sand. You were either in the basket or
you were the one sneering at the basket. She
wanted to separate people, to isolate a fringe
group. But by using that word half, she ended
up compressing her two baskets into one. That's
the perfect way to put it. The people she described
in the second basket, the ones who were desperate
for change. They didn't hear the empathy. They
just heard the insult directed at their neighbor
or maybe even at them. They heard deplorable
and thought, well, I guess that's me then. And
the part where she said, we need to understand
and empathize, totally lost. It evaporated. Yeah.
Because nuance doesn't go viral, but insults
do. That's the danger of communication in this
era. She ended up amplifying the very polarization
she was trying to condemn. It's the ultimate
law of unintended consequences. You try to put
a label on your opponent to weaken them, and
you end up giving them a team jersey. And a battle
cry. I mean, think about it. If you tell a group
of people that they are irredeemable, you're
not leaving them any room to negotiate. You're
telling them they have no place in your America.
So what choice do they have but to fight to make
sure your America never comes to be? So looking
back on all this, what's the big takeaway? Why
does the story still matter so much? Because
it's a profound lesson in the power of language
to create reality, not just describe it. When
you paint huge swaths of the country with one
brush, you create tribes. You solidify identities.
From one night at a fundraiser in New York to
a global symbol of the populist revolt. basket
of deplorables was so much more than a gaffe.
It's a masterclass in how political identity
is forged in the 21st century, and it taught
every campaign a lesson. You can insult the candidate,
you can insult their policies, but you can never...
ever insult the voters themselves. It is a lot
to think about. We've gone from the specific
words in a speech to a Broadway themed rally
in Miami to the entire sociology of an election.
It's quite a journey. It certainly is. And I
think that's a good place to leave it for this
deep dive. We've seen how a political strategy
of division can backfire and become a tool for
unity and empowerment for the other side. And
how a single phrase can echo through our politics
for years and years. Absolutely. So the question
we want to leave you with is this. We think of
political labels as weapons to push people out,
to ostracize them. But as we saw here, sometimes
that weapon gets caught and thrown right back.
So ask yourself, in our world today, when does
a label intended to shame a group actually become
the very thing that gives them their power? Thanks
for listening and stay curious.