I waded into the feverswamp on this one (went to Dummieunderground). Synthesizing the first 40 comments I read:
There’s the theory that everything is calculated by her campaign and her comment was intended to (choose one or more) a) push the topic of her email server scandal off front page b) a “set up” to show that she can apologize (i.e., the poster implies Trump can’t apologize and that Hillary intentionally faulted and then apologized graciously) or c) pull media limelight off Trump and put it on her.
Personally I think she did it to energize her base; her base likes winning and right now they feel like they are being shamed with her poor performance so she fed them raw meat.
Naturally there are the Dummicrats who put the actual number of deplorables at anywhere from 40 percent on up to 100%
A poster there said they wanted to embrace the meme “deplorables” and dutifully created a hashtag to start the process.
One tender snowflake visited our thread and said they could only “stand a few posts” and that we were “having a field day with it. So calling repubs bigots, racists, phobes etc. seems fair to them but holding Hillary accountable for insulting 25% of voters is “no fairsies” as far as I can tell.
Regarding her apology some feel she issued a “smoothe non-apology”
Since she said it at a private fundraiser I tend to think that it was not intended to go public.