Is Hillary Clinton Right About Trump Supporters? This Is What The Polling Data Says ThinkProgress

Hillary Clinton created major controversy speaking at a fundraiser in New York on Friday night. In a statement that she has since walked back, Hillary described half of her Republican opponent Donald Trump's supporters as a "basket of deplorables".

Arguing that large numbers of Trump's supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it -- Clinton said that the Trump campaign has given voice to the websites and Twitter account. Clinton then described other Trump supporters as "people who feel the government has let them down, the economy let them down, nobody cares about them." Hillary stressed that "those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

The polling data supports Hillary's argument. ThinkProgress digs into the views of Trump supporters specifically, compared not only to Democrats but to Republicans who supported other candidates.

The Male Perspective

Fear of a Female President by Peter Beinart The Atlantic

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 52 percent of white men hold a “very unfavorable” view of Clinton. That’s a whopping 20 points higher than the percentage who viewed Barack Obama very unfavorably in 2012, 32 points higher than the percentage who viewed Obama very unfavorably in 2008, and 28 points higher than the percentage who viewed John Kerry very unfavorably in 2004.

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Over the past few years, political scientists have suggested that, counterintuitively, Barack Obama’s election may have led to greater acceptance by whites of racist rhetoric. Something similar is now happening with gender. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is sparking the kind of sexist backlash that decades of research would predict. If she becomes president, that backlash could convulse American politics for years to come.

To understand this reaction, start with what social psychologists call “precarious manhood” theory. The theory posits that while womanhood is typically viewed as natural and permanent, manhood must be “earned and maintained.” Because it is won, it can also be lost. Scholars at the University of South Florida and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported that when asked how someone might lose his manhood, college students rattled off social failures like “losing a job.” When asked how someone might lose her womanhood, by contrast, they mostly came up with physical examples like “a sex-change operation” or “having a hysterectomy.”

The Subtle Misogyny in Matt Lauer's Interview With Hillary Clinton Was Appalling Slate

I am interested in the far more subtle variation of the misogyny illness, the one that lurks behind phrases such as “even-handed” and “fair-minded,” that low-grade fever that caused Matt Lauer to continually interrupt Hillary Clinton’s sharp, specific answers to his questions in the Commander in Chief Forum on NBC (thank god Clinton stood up and ignored him), and which also prompted him to allow Donald Trump to ramble on in incoherent sentence fragments about secret plans for defeating ISIS in thirty days, as if such nonsense were serious political discourse. Would our “fair-minded” journalist have treated a male candidate the way he treated Hillary Clinton? I ask you to search your souls, men and women alike. My answer is no.

Related: How Many Times Will Hillary Clinton Be Interrupted? Vogue.com

How Sexism Like Matt Laurer's Could Imperil the Nation The American Prospect

Trump, the Big Liar

Donald Trump's 'Big Liar' Technique by Paul Krugman The New York Times

Annoyed with a Trump-supporter comment on the HillaryWomen News FB page -- one calling Hillary a liar -- I have the Politifact info on who is more truthful, referenced by Krugman, right here.

One point that Krugman makes is that -- in the same way the media won't report that the AP took down their tweets on the Clinton foundation yesterday -- what Hillary Clinton said about Colin Powell advising her is true. The Powell email -- written three days after Hillary took office as Secy of State -- absolutely backed her up. So the media scoffed at her claim and reported it widely, but don't hold your breath that they will clean up their snorts. Journalists tend not to take that action.

Related: The Hillary Clinton email story is out of control The Washington Post