Hillary Clinton’s smear of half of Trump’s voters as belonging to a “basket of deplorables” will become a potent political weapon in key U.S. Senate races, Republican officials say.

Clinton made the remark Friday night at the LGBT For Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club in New York City. Forgetting herself for a minute while she basked in the glow of admiration from gay activists and elite city liberals, including Barbra Streisand, Clinton said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.”

“Hillary Clinton thinks the only reason someone wouldn’t like her … is because they are racist … This is not where [Democratic] Senate candidates want to be.”

Clinton didn’t stop there. She piled on, saying those people are “irredeemable” and “not America.”

Republicans pounced, hoping to tie the remarks around every other Democratic candidate’s neck.

“Every Democrat running for office in this country is going to have to answer the question, if they agree with Hillary Clinton insulting millions of Americans,” said Lindsay Walters, national spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Clinton’s remarks are on video and have already been made the subject of a new ad by the Donald Trump campaign.

[lz_jwplayer video= “hBYZ8MdR” ads=”true”]

Republicans are gearing up to make sure the “deplorables in a basket” remark will filter down to other races, damaging Democratic candidates in America’s heartland, especially those running for U.S. Congress. The races for U.S. Senate are particularly important this year, as the Democrats need to gain at least four or five seats to take control back from the Republicans. (They will need five seats if Trump wins, four if Clinton wins.)

The Democrats were already having trouble in some Senate races, pulling millions of dollars in TV ads out of Ohio and Florida. Now, the “deplorables” remark will be added to the burden Democratic down-ballot candidates already carried in defending Clinton’s trustworthiness and attacks on coal miners.

“This is not where [Democratic] Senate candidates want to be,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “It speaks not just to her but to the leadership of the modern Democratic Party.”

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Liz Mair, president of Mair Strategies LLC and a former RNC online communications director, said the comments won’t hurt Democratic Senate candidates in every race — but she said there will be damage.

“I think it hurts the Democrats in a couple Senate races, though those are ones where the Democrat isn’t in great shape anyway,” said Mair. “Indiana and Missouri strike me as likely there.”

Despite the opportunity, Mair cautioned that Republicans have to carefully manage their approach.

[lz_table title=”Recent Polls: New Hampshire Senate” source=”Real Clear Politics”]Poll,Ayotte,Hassan
Sept 8 NBC/WSJ/Marist,52%,44%
Sept 5Emerson,48%,46%
Aug 28 WMUR/UNH,42%,44%
Aug 12 CBS/YouGov,41%,42%
[/lz_table]

“A lot of the effect will depend on how candidates themselves, campaigns and surrogates talk about this, especially on cable news, in the next couple of days,” said Mair. “And my suspicion is that Republicans will mostly botch this, because they’re very good at walking right into traps set by Democrats where statements regarding race, especially, are involved.”

But already there is a trend of Hillary Clinton weighing down her Senate candidates. Norquist said two-thirds of voters in New Hampshire say the Democratic candidate for Senate, Gov. Maggie Hassan, is tied to Hillary Clinton. The same poll showed two-thirds of voters feel the incumbent Republican, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, is independent of Trump.

Recent polling had more bad news for the Democrats. A series of polls by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, done by Marist College and released Sunday, show a number of important contests slipping away from the Democrats.

In New Hampshire, Ayotte leads Hassan by eight points among likely voters, 52 percent to 44 percent. Ayotte had been trailing Hassan through the summer. In Nevada, one of the key Senate races this cycle, Republican Joe Heck is at 47 percent among likely voters, while Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto gets 45 percent, according to the poll.  And in Arizona, U.S. Sen. John McCain is now 19 points ahead of his Democratic opponent. Democrats had hoped to keep McCain’s seat in the competitive group this year.

In Indiana, where former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh jumped into an open-seat race to replace a retiring Republican, the Republican candidate has cut Bayh’s lead dramatically. Bayh started with a 21-point lead and a campaign chest of $9 million in July. On Friday, WTHR-TV and the Howey Political Report found Bayh at 44 percent and Republican Todd Young at 40 percent — now a 4-point race.

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For Democratic Senate candidates, Clinton’s remarks provide a painful case of déjà vu. They are similar in radioactivity to her comments just before the Ohio presidential primary in March, when Clinton promised: “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Republicans will be tempted to use the remarks, according to Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist with Rokk Solutions.

“It’s definitely low-hanging fruit,” said Bonjean. “If the Republican candidate had said it, the Democrats would scream to high heaven and use it anyway they could” — and in key battleground and Senate races, he added.

The raw elitism and contempt in Clinton’s words could reverberate much more than any one issue. Norquist notes the comments indicate Clinton has an elite view of her supporters, and has contempt for non-supporters, even if they are good people.

“She thinks the only reason someone wouldn’t like her … is because they are racist,” said Norquist. “That is an unexamined life. Here she is talking to a bunch of elitists, who don’t like the rest of the country. Barbra Streisand was in the crowd, for crying out loud.”