CNN’s Bash: Hillary’s Deplorables Comment Cost Her the ‘Traditional Democratic Base’

Monday on CNN’s “Wolf,” while discussing the 2016 presidential election when Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said that half of Republican Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables,” CNN’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash said the comment “made the traditional Democratic base, the people who ended up going to Donald Trump think she really doesn’t get us.”

Partial transcript as follows:

BASH: Number one —you and I talked about this in the break —for sure, Hillary Clinton’s deplorables comment.

TAPPER: Basket of deplorables, yeah.

BASH: Baskets of deplorables where she said  — She wasn’t caught on tape, she was saying it  with a camera there at a fund-raiser, she was talking about Donald Trump supporters. Accusing them of, at least half of them of being deplorable.

TAPPER: And irredeemable.

BASH: And she sort of apologized but she didn’t really apologize properly. And correct I’m wrong. I think it was — your interview with Robby Mook, the campaign manager, where he said that was sort of the under-reported thing that really changed their polling internally and made them realize, ‘You know what? It wasn’t necessarily just Comey. It was that issue.’ It made the traditional Democratic base, the people who ended up going to Donald Trump think she really doesn’t get us.

TAPPER:  I don’t think there’s any story that demonstrates the divide between the people who report on politicians and the voters, than that story, because a lot of us, our reaction was, okay, she got the number right but a lot of them are deplorable, a lot of them are racist. And what a lot –which is where she landed it, she got the number wrong, not the fact they’re deplorable. And a lot of voters out there were like, ‘You are , you’re talking about my husband. talking about my brother. You’re talking about where I might vote.’ And a woman who worked for the Clinton campaign, her entire job was to just talk to undecided voters in swing states the entire election. She published something in the Boston Globe after the election saying that was the moment they all started moving away from Hillary Clinton. Fascinating moment…. Attacking the voters is bad idea. A general rule of thumb.

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