She called 50% of Trump's supporters racists, homophobes, etc. How is that not exactly what the quote is made out to be? If she had said "some of Trump's supporters" you'd be right.
You'd think by now politicians --- you have one job! --- would learn that this message always loses. Attack the candidate, never the candidate's supporters. Trump offers a corollary, which is simply "if you're attacking someone other than the candidate, just be super specific about who you're attacking".
The "deplorable" thing cost Clinton. The attacks on the Khan family don't seem to have cost Trump much at all.
I'll agree that she worded that poorly and was unkind. Even Clinton apologized for that part. " “I regret saying ‘half’ -- that was wrong." [1] That's one of the differences between the candidates.
In support of her defense of the statement: "to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half". That sounds very vague to me. She even referred to "you could put half" as "grossly generalistic".
Then in the rest of her statement she got to empathizing with the people that aren't voting because we have too many Muslims and brown people make me squeeamish.
