At this point Joe Biden has not yet had a “basket of deplorables” moment similar to what Hillary Clinton had back in 2016 when she was running for President. As many will recall on September 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event, she used that phrase to describe “half” of the supporters of her opponent. The next day, she expressed regret for “saying half”, but it was too late, and the Trump campaign repeatedly used the phrase against Clinton during and after the 2016 presidential election.
Could New York Gov. Kathy Hochul by her recent misstatements have given something for Republicans to run with in 2024 … similar to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” in 2016?
Just weeks after suggesting black children “don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is,” and then calling a New York Supreme Court justice an “extremist” for following the law, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul concluded on CNN’s “The Lead” on 5/23/24 that the constituents of this diverse crowd of working-class Americans at a Trump rally in the South Bronx were “clowns.”
Now let me be clear, even though Trump has pulled to within nine points in New York’s most recent polling, I do not think that he will win New York.
However, Hochul’s “clown” statement and similarly her saying that black children “do not even know what a computer is,” could well come back to hurt the Democrats. I can almost picture the commercials with her words superimposed on black Trump rallyers in both the Bronx and in Harlem. Broadcasting a spot like this in areas across the country that have sizable black populations, could be enough to boost the black Trump vote by just a few percentage points, and who knows what that will do in November. Who knows?
Thank you, Governor Hochul !
6/15/24