Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank doubles down on Hillary Clinton’s assertion that “half” of Donald Trump’s supporters are an “irredeemable” “basket of deplorables” who are, in her words, “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.” Milbank writes that that far from being incorrect in her denunciation, Clinton may in fact have “low-balled the number” by claiming only “half” are racist.

Hillary Clinton may have been unwise to say half of Donald Trump’s supporters are racists and other “deplorables.” But she wasn’t wrong.

If anything, when it comes to Trump’s racist support, she might have low-balled the number.

Trump, speaking to the National Guard Association of the United States’ annual conference here Monday afternoon, proclaimed himself “deeply shocked and alarmed” about Clinton putting half of his supporters in the “basket of deplorables”— as if anybody, especially Trump, could be shocked by anything this late in the campaign. How dare she, Trump said, “attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, amazing people.”

But this isn’t a matter of gratuitous name-calling. This election has proved that there is much more racism in America than many believed. It came out of hiding in opposition to the first African American president, and it has been welcomed into the open by Trump.

Read the rest here.