Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ slip: 2012 campaign hints it’s not a game-changer

Hillary Clinton’s weekend comment that “half” of Donald Trump’s supporters are a racist and sexist “basket of deplorables” is still roiling the presidential race as the workweek begins. Lots of pundits are comparing it to Mitt Romney’s famous “47 percent” statement, in which he said nearly half of American voters can be written off as welfare moochers.

Lost in most of the discussion of this comparison is the fact that Romney’s “47 percent” words, revealed when a secret source leaked the tape of a fundraiser to Mother Jones magazine, didn’t much affect the 2012 outcome, and probably did not even move the polls that much.