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

Hillary Clinton Headlines September 9, 2016

Trump closes in on Clinton's projected electoral lead: Reuters/Ipsos Poll Reuters

National Democrats to Start Opening Offices in Texas Texas Tribune

A Third GOP Cabinet Secretary Endorses Hillary Clinton Huffington Post

Democrats wonder and worry: Why isn't Clinton far ahead of Trump? The Washington Post

Blue Cities, Red States The American Prospect

Hillary Clinton, rarely seen, rarely heard Politico

As reporters speculate that Hillary Clinton -- with her extreme dislike of the press -- can't be thrilled that as of Labor Day, they will all board her 'Stronger Together'-wrapped 737 airplane, her staff says the candidate is on board. For the first time in 2016, they will head from New York to Ohio to Iowa.

"She does understand that there is very good reason why it's important for everyone to be together in the thick of a general election,” said her traveling spokesman Nick Merrill. “We're going wrap the plane in blue and get on it together. There's a desire to be efficient and be able to do things a little more impromptu.”

Hillary Clinton's Feminism

Hillary Clinton's feminism: a conversation with Rebecca Traister VOX

VOX's Tara Golshan asks Rebecca Traister this question: From the time Clinton entered politics to the 2016 presidential election, there has been a massive shift in feminism. How has Clinton positioned herself in this shift?

TRAISTER: "I have interviewed her; I have talked to her a bit about this. I can't say with any authority, "well, she learned this from contemporary feminism," but my impression is, like a number of women her age who lived through the women’s movement, [who] were products of the women’s movement, then came to their professional adulthood during a period of anti-feminism — where they were totally vilified — I think it has taken her some time to understand that feminism is back.

Feminism has been re-embraced, popularized, which is often problematic in wide ranging ways. There is more than one generation of women that were totally scarred about what they could actually say: Older women who were at the height of their professional careers in the '80s and '90s. As a teenager I remember it — how vicious the anti-feminism backlash was. Hillary Clinton was the subject and object of so much of it.

My guess is over the years one of her advisers must have whispered to her it’s okay, it’s okay to say it again. Look, she wrote a post for the Toast. Are you kidding? She has been very interested in young feminist writers in a way that suggests to me she understands that there is another media in play and it’s a feminist media."

Related: Women's News | Gloria Steinem Meets Amandla Stenberg AOC Front Page News

National Polls Tighten, Swing States Not Much

Trump cuts into Clinton's lead as crucial stretch begins Politico

“The wildness and unpredictability of the last sixteen months?” said Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. “It's only going to increase. It’s not going away. Hold on to your hat."

Clinton’s camp is taking nothing for granted and admit to worrying that if he maintains his current path, he could pare points off battleground states in which Hillary leads on average by about five points.

Clinton aides are concerned about a Trump factor that they cannot control: Donald Trump's past performance has been so extreme, that there is a very low performance bar for him to have a good day. He wins by calmly looking and speaking presidential in Mexico -- even though a tweet storm broke out after he left. Unless he has a total debate stage meltdown, just standing on the same stage as Hillary Clinton will give him a boost. So don't believe assertions that the Clinton folks think the presidential election win is in the bag. They don't.