Can you address the point without reference to Trump? We were talking about Clinton, not Trump. If it helps, I think they both were self-serving, full stop. But. Whenever a criticism of Clinton hits the mark, a supporter invariably pops up talking about Trump. It comes off as an attempted diversion from Clinton herself.

So, to the point, she was not even implying that those who were on the fence about her were motivated by racism, sexism, Russian manipulation, etc? She acknowledged there could be principled reasons to disagree and not vote for her?

Clinton and Trump were opponents in an election. She was talking about her opponent's supporters. The reaction to Clinton's speech can't be described without reference her opponent's campaign.

She said something like "half" which is essentially a statistic, not an accusation towards any individual, and was not an unfamiliar idea at the time. I used the term "political correctness" for the social habit of leaving some truths unspoken, and "gaffe" for breaking that rule.

Principled reasons could have been articulated by the other half. There were also Democrats who had principled reasons for favoring other candidates, but Clinton won the primary. Knowing that those people were in the minority on both sides was a fact of contemporary political campaigns.

Given that it was essentially a two-way contest, principled objections would need to identify actual principles, and indicate whether her opponent was likely to address those principles.

Trying to discern which opinions are indeed "principled" and which are propaganda driven is a fact and challenge of modern political discourse.

>Can you address the point without reference to Trump?

No, because the point I was making was that both parties were equally self-serving, because they were both politicians running for political office, and making that point requires reference to the other party.

>If it helps, I think they both were self-serving, full stop.

Yes, that was literally my point.

>But. Whenever a criticism of Clinton hits the mark, a supporter invariably pops up talking about Trump.

Neither can one criticize Trump without his supporters deflecting with rants about Democrats, Hillary Clinton, BLM or whatever. Also, I'm not a Clinton supporter.

>So, to the point, she was not even implying that those who were on the fence about her were motivated by racism, sexism, Russian manipulation, etc?

Ok. Let me paste in the entirety of the quote, verbatim:

    "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters 
    into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. The racist, 
    sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are 
    people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that 
    used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, 
    hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, 
    but thankfully they are not America.

Now first, notice that Hillary admits that what she's saying is "grossly generalistic," so it would be a mistake to assume she's attempting to speak in precise terms - when she says "about half" here, she doesn't mean literally 50% within some margin of error, and she certainly isn't referring to the entirety of Trump supporters, much less the entirety of rural Americans (who are not all Trump supporters) nor the entirety of blue collar workers (also not Trump supporters.)

Continuing:

    "But the other basket, the other basket, and I know because I see friends from all over 
    America here. I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas, as 
    well as you know New York and California. But that other basket of people who are people
    who feel that government has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about
    what happens to their lives and their futures, and they are just desperate for change. 

Here, she's referring to the legitimate concerns and fears of Trump supporters, and further in, suggests that these Trump supporters - explicitly not the ones motivated by racism, sexis, etc - are the ones the Democrats need to empathize with, understand and reach:

    It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says but 
    he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and 
    see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they're in a dead-end. 
    Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

So to finally address the points:

   >she was not even implying that those who were on the fence about her were motivated by racism, sexism, Russian manipulation, etc? 

No, she was not. She was implying that those people were not on the fence and would never vote for her to begin with.

  >She acknowledged there could be principled reasons to disagree and not vote for her? 

No she did not. Obviously no politician would ever do that, even if they believed it. She was arguing that the Democrats need to convince the subset of Trump supporters willing to listen that they have better solutions to their concerns than Trump.

Ok. You convinced me. Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment was not transmitted charitably. A charitable reading can be criticized, but yes, she was not calling all Trump supporters deplorable