Deplorables? The Danger Of Labeling Half The Nation

A Basket of Deplorables? This was the label that Hillary Clinton applied to half of the supporters of Donald Trump. It was not a fatal mistake but it could turn out to be a lot more damaging than the candidate originally thought. Just ask Mitt Romney.

During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was caught on tape lamenting that 47 percent of the electorate was going to vote for President Obama because they are dependent on government services and don’t want to pay any taxes. It is questionable whether Mitt’s campaign was over at that point, but it definitely didn’t help. The problem with labeling people like that is that, in the end, the people who are going to decide whether you become President or not are the ones who take the most offense. It isn’t because they fear that they fall into that category, but the insinuation is that there are a built in group of voters who are so stupid that they can’t make up their minds for themselves and therefore have been infected with the lies being fed to them by politicians.

In every election, it becomes necessary to question the intelligence of the common voter and it is very possible to find that you think the other side is stupid for having the guts to vote against their own (and in the opinion of the judger, the country’s) interest, but in the end it has nothing to do with that.

Voters want to think that they are voting for a candidate or their party based on some level of ideological agreement. There are those firmly in the belief that their support of a party transcends the individual candidate and forwards on to their ideals. but the people who don’t have that level of allegiance to ideology and candidate are what the political spectrum refers to as Independents. They are the ones that decide elections, they are the ones who vote their conscience and they really don’t like the idea of a candidate who is basically going to call them stupid if they fail to win them over.

So now back to Hillary Clinton‘s remark.

Are more than half of Trump’s supporters “Deplorables“? Do they really not represent America as the candidate claimed? Of course not. She is talking about millions of people who have not a racist or xenophobic nor any other type of phobic bone in their bodies. They do not consider themselves white supremacists nor hateful. They are average everyday people. They also don’t believe that the Republican Party in the party of David Duke or the KKK like those on the far left are trying to portray them as. So when it comes down to it, to refer to Trump supporters as “Deplorables” who don’t represent America might possibly refer to them too, and they are not going to have it.

During the primaries, Donald Trump rocketed to the top of the Republican field not based on ideas but based on his outlandish behavior. There are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who feel his candidacy is an act of lunacy in and of itself, but in the end, these are the same people who watched as the media was all Trump all the time for the entire primary. There are plenty of people who secretly hoped Trump would be the nominee because they felt that Hillary or Bernie could wipe the floor with him come November. Now those same people who thought he would be so easy to beat, Clinton the leader of them, are calling Trump and his supporters deplorable and un-American. Donald Trump was crucified in the press for not dropping the insults after the primary was over and saw his numbers plummet in the polls. You would think Hillary Clinton would have paid attention and avoided falling into the same trap.