Hillary Clinton says something quite like Mitt Romney's old 47% remark.

When I opened this blog at 7:15 a.m., I said I had 2 things I wanted to write about from the Hillary Town Hall transcript. I got the first thing out at 9:27 — it's not easy! — "Hillary Clinton cannot let you hold a viewpoint about guns that is terrorizing the vast majority of Americans."

Now, it's almost noon, and I've got to tell you the other thing, which is something I am going to connect to Mitt Romney's infamous "47%" remark. You remember the "SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters" that hurt him more than anything in the 2012 election. He said that there were "47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," who believe what they believe — "that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it" — and it was his "job... not to worry about those people," because he could "never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Oh! The outrage. Romney wrote off 47% of the people. No point trying to convince them. Romney tried to explain, to reword the idea he'd really intended, but "47%" stuck, maybe because it resonated with something else people associated with him — that he's a rich guy in the party of the rich — or maybe because it's just so wrong, in a democracy, to tell 47% of the people that you're not even going to bother to talk with them — they're hopeless. A presidential candidate needs to be able to talk everyone, to make good arguments to them, even though he knows that he can't persuade everyone. He has to believe that the citizens he would preside over are real, that that they have minds capable of engaging with ideas and participating as citizens. The 47% remark was a conversational bomb of historic proportion.

So what did Hillary say at the town hall? The host, Christiane Amanpour was asking Hillary about whether some of the opposition to President Obama has to do with his race. Hillary said that she couldn't read everyone's mind but that some of the opposition is "virulent" and "quite detached" from substantive judgment on the merits, which is a way of saying without saying that maybe it is about race. She pivots to talking about herself — maybe some opposition to her is because she's a woman — and proceeds to her book title theme of "hard choices": "he has to shut out a lot of the other stuff that's going on to have the concentration to be able to make those hard choices."

And then comes the part that struck me as similar to Romney's 47% remark:

So, if someone wants to dislike the president, remember, 60 percent is a landslide. If you get that kind of vote. That means 40 percent, four out of 10 people don't like you. And you have to know that, because even if you get to 60 percent, which is hard to do, you're operating on a margin where four out of 10 are never going to be happy or satisfied -- 

It's that "never" (along with a percentage) that made me think of Romney, who said he could "never convince" the 47%. Now, Hillary didn't attribute any particular quality to the 40%, not directly anyway, the way Romney disastrously typed 47% of Americans as dependent and irresponsible. But she was answering the question about racial prejudice, she had extended the problem to gender prejudice, and she was talking about the segment of people whose opposition to Obama (and, by extension, her) is "virulent" and "quite detached" from the actual policies and issues that are supposed to be under discussion.

And similar to Romney, her point is that you have to ignore a bunch of people who are not on your side and try to move forward doing what you think is right by making your arguments the pool of possible supporters.

Now, I do see a difference, in that Romney made it sound as though it's always the same people who are in the 47% and they are stagnantly stuck there. Hillary's remark could mean — rather innocuously — that whatever you do, you're lucky — you're getting a landslide — when you have as much as 60%, so you'll almost always have to deal with at least 40% of the people opposing you. This 40% may contain shifting groups of people depending on the issue under discussion. But she didn't say 40% opposition on any issue. She said 40% "don't like you," which seems to pick up the race/gender animus idea that Amanpour brought up. And Hillary didn't say at any given moment, 40% will be displeased. She said 40% are never going to be happy, which makes it feel like a stagnant set that isn't worth worrying about. She seems to be saying that when you are President it is your job not to worry about those people, which is what Romney said about the 47%.

Amanpour felt moved at this point to follow up with "Do you think some of that is latent racism, vestiges of racism, as some people have said?" Clinton's answer was:

Well, I know that -- I don't want to -- I don't want to say that I verify that, because that would be generalizing too broadly. 

Good. Good work not taking bait.

I believe that there are people who have trouble with ethnicity, with race, with gender, with sexual orientation, you name it. And therefore, they are not developing a reasoned opinion -- even if it's an opinion in opposition, but they are a reacting [on] a visceral stereotypical basis. And that's unfortunate. 

Unfortunate... but is it hopeless? 

And now, it's almost 1 in the afternoon. That was — as Hillary might say — hard work.