Democrat Hillary Clinton gang-insulted more than 30 million people late last week by terming half of Republican Donald Trump's supporters as a "basket of deplorables."
Would you put yourself in that basket?
In the 2012 election, some 127 million people voted for either President Barack Obama or challenger Mitt Romney. If about half of that same number supports Clinton and half supports Trump, the deplorable half of Trump's support would equal more than 31 million voters.
Sure, Clinton walked back her remarks less than 24 hours later by saying she was "grossly generalistic" and that she regretted "saying 'half' - that was wrong."
But her comments at a private fundraiser - where press are rarely invited, but were this time - showed her true disdain for anyone who would dare to oppose her and, worse, displayed a misunderstanding of the electorate that made Trump the Republican candidate.
What drove most people to back the New York businessman were not the "prejudice and paranoia" and "hateful views and voices" that Clinton, in her halfhearted mea culpa, nevertheless said described the "deplorable" Trump campaign.
No, why the real-estate mogul and television reality show host is where he is today is because his supporters are weary of the Obama administration that happened to employ the former first lady and back-bench senator as secretary of state.
They never wanted the Affordable Care Act that got shoved down their throats and caused many of them to lose their insurance plans. They never wanted an expanded government that has attempted to erode religious and press freedoms and now makes decisions about the bathrooms we use. They never wanted open arms extended to illegal immigrants and refugees from countries that support terrorism. They never wanted an America where more people have fallen into poverty and become dependent on food stamps. And they certainly never wanted a foreign policy that would leave a power vacuum in Iraq for the horrific Islamic State to fill and would negotiate a one-sided nuclear agreement with one of the world's most active terror sponsoring countries.
In Trump, whether or not he could do as president what he promises, they found someone who would give voice to what they saw occurring, who took on timid members of the Republican Party who danced around the issues, and who challenged Big Media in its obvious bias.
Now, whether or not the Republican candidate is everything social conservatives are looking for, whether he is a small-government man, whether the right words always come out of his mouth, he is the Republican candidate. Libertarian or Green Party candidates aside, he is the only man who can come between the country and, in effect, the third term of the Obama administration.
To Clinton, that's what makes him "deplorable." That's what makes those 30-plus million supporters, to use her words, "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic - you name it."
If you support Trump, or even if you are considering supporting Trump because you don't like what the Democrat candidate represents, do you consider yourself any of those terms?
Her broadside is no different from saying Clinton's backers support a general disdain for the law because that's what she did in using a private email server and lying repeatedly about it, or saying that her supporters believe the government should operate as a "pay-for-play" system because that's allegedly how the Clinton Foundation worked while she was secretary of state.
It's not fair to tar all who prefer Clinton in that way any more than it is to paint Trump's supporters with a broad brush.
In 2012, Romney made a comment at a private fundraiser in which he suggested that 47 percent of people in the country were so reliant on government that they would vote for Obama "no matter what." Although his statement had some basis in fact, he never should have made it.
Just as Clinton did, he apologized, saying "I said something that's just completely wrong." And while he added that he believed his "life has shown that I care about 100 percent" and "this whole campaign is about the 100 percent," many analysts believe the comment helped sink his campaign.
Big Media, of course, was invested in him losing and Obama winning, so it kept his comments afloat. Since Clinton is the media favorite this time around, her comments are not likely to be widely repeated.
But Trump should continue to remind people of how she describes his supporters, not an allegation that could be supported by facts like Romney's comments were but how she would categorize a quarter of the electorate.
Are you "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic?" Are you a "deplorable?" Even accepting Clinton's "gross generalistic" comment, she's still ascribing terms to Trump's campaign that fit a percent or two of his supporters. The electorate deserves better.