The Politics of Deplorability

I’m going to start with an old joke. I should warn you here that it’s a bit of an off-color joke, but it illustrates the point I really want to make here. Consider this an advance apology and a warning. Here’s the story, via Quote Investigator:

“They are telling this of Lord Beaverbrook and a visiting Yankee actress. In a game of hypothetical questions, Beaverbrook asked the lady: ‘Would you live with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds?’ She said she would. ‘And if be paid you five pounds?’ The irate lady fumed: ‘Five pounds. What do you think I am?’ Beaverbrook replied: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.”

I think the joke is pretty obvious. Now onto Hillary Clinton and the Basket of Deplorables. First, I actually do disagree with the language used, but that’s just because rhetorically it’s weird. Neither here nor there, though. One reason most politicians are trained lawyers is that at its core, politics is about making a case. Either for yourself or against the other person and very often doing both at the same time. I’ve long maintained that the way to win this election is to make it a referendum on the other person. Look – I think Clinton will be a fine President, she’s almost too qualified, and I would vote her against any of the clowns that currently occupy the smoking crater of the GOP. But the simple fact is that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of her, and you play the hand you’re dealt. Both Trump and Clinton by definition have to paint this election as the lesser of two evils, because a majority of voters think they’re both pretty evil.

Clinton has made this case basically from the primary on. Trump is unhinged, he’s a lunatic, he’s a crazy person, he’s a chaos candidate – sorry, wait, those are what the members of his party have said about him. My bad. Anyway, she’s called him unfit and unqualified and a million other things. But shockingly, none of them really stuck. She had to go further, she had to go bigger. She had to be – dare I say it – a touch more Trumpian.

The Basket of Deplorables is an incredibly calculated feint. It’s designed to look and feel like a gaffe because the media loves gaffes and gaffes are more fun to cover than the truth. But here’s where the realpolitik comes into play. We all know that some of Trump’s supporters are cavemen and monsters. Like the above joke, we’ve already decided those people exist within the Trump Tent. Now we’re just trying to determine the degree.

So there’s the first step of the process – the pearl-clutching and faux outrage, the how dare she? – but it’s immediately followed by the second part, which is: Not half! Maybe, like, a few. But half?! And now the debate isn’t about Hillary Clinton saying a mean thing; it’s about determining the specific threshold of truth to the mean thing she said.

Put another way: Hillary Clinton basically said Donald Trump eats lunch with a fleet of bridge trolls. And Trump, and Pence, and all of their surrogates now have to say “Look, there’s one bridge troll (David Duke), but we don’t like him.”

Now the conversation isn’t about Clinton, it’s about Trump, and Duke, and how far Trump’s affinity for bridge trolls extends. The simple fact is that it’s not one bridge troll. It’s all of the bridge trolls.

Trump can pretend Clinton called millions of people “deplorable” and “un-American,” but don’t forget one of his speakers at the GOP Convention thinks the franchise for women is when America started going downhill.

Trump can do outreach to African-American communities, but it was Milo that got banned from Twitter for going after an African-American actress.

Here’s a quote from Kellyanne Conway.

Here’s an article from Breitbart, the website Bannon ran until recently.

And Paul Manafort’s history of dictator-advising.

Here’s Corey Lewandowski assaulting a female reporter for Breitbart!

Trump can distance himself from the KKK all he wants, but he can’t distance himself from literally every campaign manager he’s employed thus far.

Clinton doesn’t want the bridge troll vote, any more than Trump wants the Latino or the African-American vote. That’s why this matters. Because there are people who deep down in their soul think Trump is a monster who has surrounded himself with monsters, but maybe they can reconcile that with some bullshit about lower taxes. Maybe they can hide behind the claims of political correctness that dog Democrats. Maybe they can believe that David Duke has a warped understanding of the Trump campaign.

Or they can face the reality. These are the people Hillary is talking to. She is making the case that supporting Trump gives tacit support to the white supremacists, to the racists, to the xenophobes, to the Islamophobes, to the misogynists. We know they’re there. Now we’re just trying to determine the degree. And if you vote for Trump, you have to accept the moral culpability that comes with that vote. Just because you’re not in the Basket of Deplorables doesn’t mean you’re not voting for that basket to have a whole fuck of a lot more power than it should ever have.

Clinton has a relatively hard base of support. So does Trump. This battle will be won and lost over the independents who dislike both of them and the Republicans who hate Trump but might just sell their soul and vote for him anyway. Clinton is no longer providing them cover. A vote for Trump is a vote for a candidate enthusiastically endorsed by the KKK. A man who surrounds himself with conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. A man who turned first to a dictator whisperer and then to someone who has “given a platform to racists the alt-right.” A man who has the gall to say Clinton has criticized millions of Americans when his entire campaign is built around criticizing millions of Americans.

Square that with your conscience.

Enough with the Pearl Clutching

Don’t you just love how Donald Trump says whatever’s on his mind? He’s got no filter, he just tells it like it is. He calls Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, he calls Megyn Kelly a rage-filled monster because she’s probably on her period, he has led a long-term effort to de-legitimize Barack Obama’s Presidency, he’s called Hillary Clinton a criminal who should be in jail, he’s threatened to murder someone just to see if he’ll lose votes, he’s advocated the use of torture, waterboarding, and revenge-murder of terrorists’ families including children, he’s praised Vladimir Putin’s murder of journalists and political opponents as strong leadership. He’s not one of those stupid fucking politicians. He doesn’t care, okay? Mexico, you’re paying for the wall! Donald Trump calls it like it is! He’s one of us!

Hillary Clinton admitted that something like 20% of the population (depending on how you handle the arithmetic – just don’t use Common Core!) have some less-than-savory ideas about Muslims, African-Americans, Women, Latinos, immigrants, or literally just any other foreigners. The BASKET OF DEPLORABLES! Yeah, that’s right, HRC herself is taking straight up aim at some of the people she doesn’t like. Bigots? Fuck ‘em. Racists? Fuck ‘em. Xenophobes? Fuck ‘em.

I bet people are going to love this, right? I mean, shit, taking aim at the motherfucking PC police is what Trump is all about. He isn’t a politician, he says the things we all think but can’t say out loud. Well, now it’s Hillary’s turn and hoo boy did she bring the fire. I mean, going after the KKK? How much more politically incorrect can you get? Xenophobes? Madam Secretary, please!

Wait – what’s that? We’re not on board? No? Now it’s a problem? Now we’re clutching pearls? Someone get the smelling salts – Hillary Clinton called a certain percentage of Americans deplorable! I mean, Trump called them rapists and killers and unfit to be judges and lazy and criminals and cop-killers and warned of violent roving bands of illegal immigrants stolen from like The Warriors. But all of that really pales in comparison to – deplorable. Oh my. The naked and unchecked bigotry of this word – deplorable – is far beyond anything Trump has ever said. He’s joked about people murdering his opponent (or deporting her, or jailing her without cause, I mean, shit, the entire convention in Cleveland felt like something out of The Crucible). But she has dared to call his supporters – who, by the way, count among themselves more than a few actual Klansmen and white supremacists – deplorable.

You know what, America? And I’m speaking specifically to the people who think it’s cool and hip to not be “politically correct” because you don’t feel the need to apologize for your unchecked racism and bigotry.

Go fuck yourselves.

If you want a President who calls it like it is, I’m gonna need you to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself: is our country batting a thousand? Is that 20% number so egregious to warrant this reaction? Is “Trump supporter” really a term of bigotry on the level of “Mexican” or “black” ? Is that how discrimination works?

You motherfuckers do not get to revel in Trump’s ability to condone what is supposed to be the profane ideas at the edge of American politics and then criticize Clinton for being honest.

Not being politically correct doesn’t work that way. If you want the bareknuckle boxing that is a Donald Trump rally – stoking fear and anger and resentment – you need to learn how to take a punch.

I’m sorry that you thought your candidate was the only one who got to play by his own rules, that Hillary Clinton was too perfect and politically correct and would never put a toe out of line.

She’s playing your game now, she’s not being politically correct, she’s doing all of the things you loved about Trump. Enough with this silly double standard.

Your argument has lost whatever shred of validity it might have once claimed. She’s playing Trump’s game and there are about half of your people who should understand this is the opening fucking salvo. Because you can’t hide behind your asinine anti-PC bullshit any more.

Clinton is coming for you and she’s going to do it in the only language you understand. If you want to live in a world where you have the right to call black people lazy, understand it comes at the cost of Hillary Clinton calling you a racist prick. Let’s see how strong you people are when political incorrectness turns into a two way game.

My guess is it won’t go so well.