4 Divisive Political Quotes That Actually Aimed to Bridge Divisions

The point was to reach out to this group. “We can’t take anyone or any place for granted,” she said. “And therefore I am asking you to volunteer for a phone bank, for a canvas — at the very least if you know anybody who’s even thinking about voting for Trump, stage an intervention! That may be one conversion therapy I endorse.”

So, she was calling some Trump supporters deplorables to say the rest are not. But also, even the part calling some deplorables wasn’t exactly serious. The full deplorable sentence was, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” 

And then she paused for laughter. The part where she lists off all the -phobics, that was her rattling off people’s previous accusations rather than levying them herself. Go watch the video — a proper transcription of that part might surround each word with mocking quotation marks.

Some people on Trump’s side are like that, she said, but the point here was that few are, they weren’t significant before Trump amplified their message and they don’t encompass his entire base. Clinton later regretted using the word “half,” and the rest of the speech’s wording implies she was placing much less than half of supporters in that category. 

The lesson here is, in general, don’t say someone’s “one of the good ones” in an attempt to connect. It rarely works. Had she not said that “deplorables” line, people the next day would instead be talking about what immediately followed her speech at that event. It was Barbra Streisand singing a Trump-themed parody of “Send in the Clowns.” 

Granted, that alone might have been enough to cost Clinton the election. 

Obama’s opponent in the race leapt upon the opportunity, calling the remarks “elitist and out-of-touch” and passing out stickers labeled “I’m not bitter.” That opponent for the Democratic nomination was Hillary Clinton. Let’s hope that practice of calling out such remarks as elitist would never come back to bite her. 

The binders were not metaphorical. The Boston Globe later reported on them — they were actual three-ring binders, weighing a total of 15 pounds, filled with compiled résumés of women. Of course, those were “binders of women’s résumés,” not “binders of women,” but as gaffes go, that wording should have been pretty unremarkable. 

People could have dissected the remarks more seriously. They could have pointed out that the question he was answering was about pay equity, not representation in government, and those are two different issues. But it was more fun to mock the phrasing because that lets us make memes.

That’s not to say all famous Romney quotes were about him fighting for equality. Why, remember the time he said 47 percent of the country were beyond hope? He said 47 percent don’t pay income tax, will vote for Obama no matter what and believe that they are entitled to all kinds of government assistance. These are people who “are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims.” This quote was also said at a fundraiser, and we never would have heard this one, had a bartender not recorded it and leaked it. 

Surprisingly, even this speech — much like the deplorables one — wasn’t really about the people being insulted but about reaching out to the remainder. “What I have to do,” said Romney, after summarizing the people in the first basket, “is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not...” 

At that point, the footage ends, so we sadly never got to hear Romney’s plan for becoming likable.

The number “47” wasn’t arbitrary, incidentally, like the deplorable “half” was. That was the actual percentage of Americans at the time who didn’t pay income tax. Some might point out that those 47 percent have good reasons for not paying income tax and aren’t breaking any law, but the fact remains, if you don’t pay income tax, you have little chance of being attracted by Romney’s promise to cut income taxes. 

In fact, when people expressed anger at the quote, they didn’t dispute that part about taxes or the characterization that they think the government should give people stuff. People interviewed in the video below seem most struck by the tone of divisiveness — and by the part that says they “believe they are victims.” Note: Be careful how you phrase your objection when someone accuses you of feeling like a victim. Otherwise, you’ll be feeling like a victim over being accused of feeling like a victim, and you’ll never win.

That above reaction video, by the way, was put up by the Obama campaign. And so, the chain of each politician mocking the other’s quotes goes on. 

In truth, $22 really is an absurd price for avocado toast (even in Australian dollars), and Salt had written about that extravagance before. And yes, people would be able to save more if they spend less eating out. But the idea that a couple fewer avocado toasts a week would soon net you a down payment was absurd — which is why the quote went viral, but was also why it popped up in this satirical piece in the first place. 

“Young people as well as middle-aged people can spend their money on whatever they like, including smashed avocados,” Salt later wrote, in a column explaining the earlier column’s joke, and he’s elsewhere shared articles about how the housing crisis is real and a supply-side issue. But mainly, as his defense, he said to just go read the earlier column to judge whether it was being serious. Some things he writes are serious, while some are not. Here is a joke article in the same paper where he says he wants to start the Centre for Fashionable Thinking (which supports anything popular). Here is one where he proposes a physics explanation for where all these pillows on his bed suddenly came from. 

In the years since 2016, you may have heard “avocado toast” namedropped by TV pundits who are genuinely mocking young people. More often, though, you yourself or someone like you will bring it up sarcastically, having never thought it made sense. This is so many levels of irony deep, we can only imagine how incomprehensible it might seem to someone who missed the avocado meme the first time around. 

Bud: Ooh, so Tesla’s running out of cash right now? Boo hoo! Maybe they should try buying less avocado toast!
Lou: Wait, what? Tesla buys a lot of avocado toast?
Bud: No, I’m just referencing that thing. You know, where they say young people should stop buying avocado toast, to save money?
Lou: Who says that?
Bud: I don’t know. Some Australian I think?
Lou: Okay. And you’re saying that’s a good way to save money?
Bud: No! I’m being ironic. I’m saying it’s impossible to save money doing stuff like that.
Lou: So, you’re... sympathizing with Tesla then?
Bud: Of course not. I’ll calling out the hypocrisy. Of running out of money after chiding millennials for buying avocado toast.
Lou: Wait, Tesla was the one saying the avocado toast thing then?
Bud: I don’t know who said it, I already told you that.
Lou: How about we drop this conversation and get a bite to eat? I know just what I want. 

And they go and buy some cronuts. 

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