Top 10 Hillary Clinton Quotes Which Lost Her the Election

by Josh Guckert

In the past month, political commentators have done their best to pinpoint why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. With both candidates so massively unpopular, the general consensus has become that Clinton failed to achieve victory in large part because she could not energize the progressive base.

Just as she lost to massive underdog Barack Obama in 2008 and ran an unexpectedly close race with Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, Clinton failed to win a race she was expected to win comfortably. In the end, for all her follies, she still came within 200,000 votes (in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan) of victory. However, every one of her missteps is glaring in retrospect. These are ten Clinton quotes which helped her lose the election.

1. September 10, 2016: “Basket of deplorables”

Perhaps one of the most ill-advised statements in presidential history, Clinton remarked that half of Trump’s supporters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic…you name it.” In the aftermath, many Trump supporters on social media began proudly using “Deplorable” as a first name. While Clinton stated that the other half of Trump supporters are “people who feel that government has let them down,” her initial comment stuck and allowed Republicans to easily label her out of touch.