Casey Stengel once lamented about his hapless New York Mets, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
And may I bemoan, in a similar vein, “Don’t anyone here know this language?”
For all that the Trump campaign bewails Hillary Clinton’s “insult to voters,” for all that the card-carrying concern trolls of the We’re-Just-Here-To-Sell-Advertisement Media (Motto, “Revenue Trumps Truth”) rue the possible “effects on the electorate’s opinion that we are trying to affect by mentioning its effects,” it is the case that none of them has demonstrated any evidence they know what a “basket of deplorables” might actually be.
Look at the verbs above: lament, bemoan, bewail, rue. Every one of them is a synonym, to a greater or lesser degree, of the word “deplore.” A much closer synonym than “disapprove of, or look down on.”
Hillary did not say “basket of detestables.”
A deplorable is not one I abhor, loathe, or detest (though I may feel that way about some of them). It is someone I regret. It is someone whose words or actions I grieve over. Someone who causes me heavy, sad sighs. These are my feelings when I see or read hate, intolerance and bigotry from the mouths of Trump’s supporters.