I love it when people who are smarter than I am agree with me! I never thought for one minute that Hillary Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" comment was either unintentional or accidental. And now it turns out that the Washington Post agrees with me. Talk about good company. Let me explain.
How often have we heard the complaint that Hillary Clinton comes off as impersonal because she is too calculating and scripted, she is never spontaneous and comes across as aloof. This may well be true. But there's another consideration at play here. When you have a candidate that is that composed and scripted, they seldom screw up. The script is prepared, it is studied, it is practiced, and it comes off flawlessly. This is what you get with Hillary Clinton. A mistake of this magnitude, very unlikely.
Hillary has been playing this game with the press for more than 25 years, she's a pro. The Orange Julius steals an entire news cycle or more with each outrageous statement. She's turning the tables on Trump, but with an almost surgical purpose. If she had said "a few" or "some" of Trumps supporters were "deplorable", it would have caused a minor tremor, but not overtake the cycle. In saying "½ of his supporters" I have no doubt that she was referring to the 61% who think that Obama is a secret Muslim-Marxist-Kenyan here to destroy the country. The "50%" was the hook to grab the attention of the press. Look how quickly and professionally the campaign walked back only the "50%' portion, I'm betting that they had that written by the time she made the original statement.
And let me ask you a question. If this was such a major gaffe, why did the campaign already have a :30 spot ready to go, only having to insert Trumps peeved response to her comment. Hillary did this with a specific reason, to get the press talking about the racism in the Trump campaign.
And it's working. In an article today in the Washington Post , they came to the same conclusion that I did. And they also confirmed that the media has picked up on this.
But one thing that does seem clear amid all the fallout from the remarks is that the national media is now spending more time talking about Trump's bigotry and racist campaign.
This has already produced some high-profile moments. For instance, Trump veep candidate Mike Pence was repeatedly prodded on CNN to say whether David Duke is "deplorable." Pence wouldn't take the bait, but the net effect that produced was to create the impression that he was unwilling to criticize Duke; he subsequently went on Fox to clean up the mess.
This was exactly what the Clinton campaign was looking for with her "controversial" comment. I have had the teleovision on since about 11 a.m. PDT this morning, and every show I've seen on both CNN and MSNBC has covered Clinton's remarks extensively, but more importantly they have highlighted past "deplorable" statements made by Trump, and have played the :30 Clinton spot in its entirety. This is "earned media coverage" at its finest. Trump uses it to highlight his most pompous self, Clinton is using it to take a light slap on the wrist in order for the media to pivot and hammer Trump on his previous statements. Every show that I've seen today on either channel has showed a clearly pissed off Mike Pence trying yet again to repudiate David Duke without stooping to use Hillary's term. Instead of Clinton getting hammered, the Trump campaign is on the defensive.
This is clearly aimed at one particular demographic. And it's a big one, one that no Republican has ever lost since polling started tracking it, college educated white voters. As we speak, Trump is tied with Clinton with white college educated males, and he's getting his ass kicked by a whopping 23% with white college educated women. And guess what? In a recent WaPo poll, 60% of college educated whites think that Trump is biased against women and minorities. Kudos to the WaPo for not poisoning the well on this poll! They very carefully used the word "biased", as opposed to the more inflammatory "racist" or "bigoted" that could have skewed the honest results.
The longer that Clinton can keep the media talking about the bigotry and racism in Trumps campaign, the longer she can get them to keep playing that :30 ad, the more firmly she locks in this unexpected goldmine of support. And if she can get them once, they may take another look at the Democrats and decide to stick around for a while. Just another possible unintended benefit for the Democrats from Trump's candidacy.
Thanks as always for reading!
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