Who’s deplorable?

WHEN Hillary Clinton recently said that she puts half of Donald Trump’s supporters in a “basket of deplorables”, calling such folk “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it,” her Republican rival gleefully dubbed this outburst “the single biggest mistake of the political season”. Certainly, Mrs Clinton does seem to have broken a cardinal rule of politics: attack those running for office and their policies by all means, but never blame the voters. As Democrats scrambled to defend their nominee, they urged Americans to consider Mrs Clinton’s remarks in context, and to study the kindlier thoughts that she shared next, about how she puts other Trump backers into a second “basket”, unhappily filled with folk who feel the government and the economy has let them down, leaving them “just desperate for change” and deserving of understanding.

Alas, if Clinton allies think that sympathy will get them off the hook, they may be misjudging how much voters enjoy being called “desperate”. Take a step back, and the whole Trump-bashing riff by Mrs Clinton, delivered on September 9th against the slightly unhelpful backdrop of a fund-raising gala in Manhattan, points to a dreadful dilemma that the Republican presidential nominee represents for the entire political establishment, meaning not just Mrs Clinton and the Democrats, but principled and thoughtful Republicans, and (at the risk of navel-gazing) journalists trying to report fairly on this election, too.