On Monday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily, pollster and political analyst Pat Caddell drew a parallel between Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” insult to Trump voters, Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comment from 2012, and Barack Obama’s remark about people who ”get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” in 2008.
“It’s interesting that these things always seem to take place at fundraisers,” Caddell observed, predicting that Clinton’s comment will hurt her as much as Romney’s damaged his campaign.
“She did it in front of a group of what I called ‘New York swells’ last night, I think it’s appropriate, in a fundraiser, and they’re all laughing and cheering, and what have you,” said Caddell, referring to his weekly Sunday night appearance on Fox News’ “Political Insiders.” Caddell went on:
And what’s amazing to me, in looking at some of the news this morning, and even some of the cable news shows, one in particular, where you have people who are, in fact, in media, and others – and it was on Meet the Press yesterday, when former Obama adviser and supporter Stephanie Cutter – they’re pushing the line that there’s something wrong with Trump voters. This is a very serious problem. I believe that it’s the mask falling here.
“Hillary Clinton probably should have gone to the hospital or something Friday night, because I think that she let some of her feelings get away from her,” said Caddell, looping in the other big story from the weekend, about Clinton’s health problems. “This statement was amazing because not only did she condemn the one half of Trump voters, she basically said the others were too stupid to know what they were doing.”
He noted that once the Clinton campaign realized “this could be a disastrous statement,” she walked it back, and admitted she shouldn’t have said it. However, Caddell said this walkback could not obscure how Clinton had captured “the point of view of the political class about the American people.”
I’ve said all year, the refusal of the political class, and particularly of the political class media, to give legitimate recognition to the concerns, and what is a revolt of the American people, to what they think is the mismanagement of their government, and to the trend in this country downward — and to say these people have no legitimate, that they’re somehow illegitimate, that they must be racists, and bigots, and what have you…
I mean, it is unreal, and it is a big mistake, because as it becomes apparent, if you’re a voter — even if you’re not a Trump voter, but you’re an ordinary American, this insult was also meant for you. You don’t listen the way you’re supposed to.
Caddell speculated this contempt for the people could become an even greater issue for Clinton than her health.
Marlow admitted that, in 2012, he underestimated the damage Romney would suffer from his “47 percent” comment and was “shocked at how offended people were at the insult.” Caddell thought the wild cheering of Clinton’s elite audience would make the targets of Clinton’s insult even angrier.
He said this moment showed how “the mask is falling, folks, before your eyes”:
This is how they feel. It’s how she really feels. It is how they view the ordinary American — the people who build this country every day, and who make it work.
This notion in this society that the elite, the self-contained and inwardly communicating people in the elite here, who are among themselves, they really do have contempt. They will not recognize the legitimacy of the American revolt that brought Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old socialist, to the brink of knocking Hillary off in the Democratic primary system, which was not the fairest system, brought Donald Trump from nowhere as an outsider.
These feelings are quite strong, and it is finally time you get on the table, and they’re not going to be able to walk away from it.
“While I think the health thing today, and in the near future, is a huge concern, I think this has much more lasting damage,” he judged, suggesting Trump’s campaign should be “jumping on this” as “an insult to ordinary Americans, whether or not they’re for Trump.”
“It just drips with condescension and contempt, which I think is unmatched in American history,” Caddell said.
Marlow noted with dismay that such contempt could also be found among Republican elites, which explains why Establishment candidates fared poorly in the 2016 GOP primary — for example, Jeb Bush spending $160 million to win a paltry four delegates.
“It’s not just Democrats,” Caddell agreed. “Look, the division in this country is not so much just Democrats and Republicans. It’s the mainstream of America against the political class, which assumes their superiority even as they fail… in Washington, inside that Beltway, it’s both Democrat and Republican elites.”
“That’s why they hate Trump. They’re terrified of him. They’re really terrified of the voters. But the notion, in this democracy, that you don’t have confidence in the fundamental decency, and the fundamental goodness, of the American people — you have no business being in politics, or talking about it,” Caddell declared.
After a doctor called in to offer some thoughts on Hillary Clinton’s Sunday health scare, Caddell said he was struck by the sight of “the Secret Service being arrayed around, not to help her or to protect her — that’s their job — but to keep the press away.”
“They’re kept in their pen like good animals, which I think they are, to keep them from breaking out to follow this,” he said contemptuously.
“Notice who was helping her: her staff, and this gentleman who travels with her, apparently, who has some kind of neurology something. I don’t know, but it’s interesting,” Caddell said. “She had pneumonia, and she was seeing all these people, whether the little girl yesterday, or — I don’t know how contagious that is. I mean, I’m not a doctor. And look, we all hope she gets better. I mean, we don’t want anything like this.”
He noted polls revealed genuine concern about Clinton’s health, but those who express such concerns are “derided, and attacked, with the Washington Post and all of them going, how dare you, whatever — and then you have this episode, on top of last week.”
“A lot of people who believed something was wrong with her, they have now been confirmed in their thinking that, once again, there was an effort to keep the truth away, and that their concerns are not some kind of terrible bias and conspiracy theory, but are actually rooted in some kind of reality,” said Caddell. “We have this campaign where these obvious things that should be raised are not, and they’re being attacked by the very people whose job it is to explore it. Even this morning, they keep trying to diminish what happened.”
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