"Some" and "a quarter of the electorate" are not anywhere near equivocable, though

Given that she uses some interchangably in her own speech where she admits she's being overly generalistic....I'd disagree. She pretty clearly didn't mean an actual "quarter". I'd say that's worst case scenario that you can take it that way. But, still, my point was moreso that she never ever said half but, somehow, that's what people took away from it.

it wasn't too hard for the not-targeted half of his base to take it as being aimed at them.

And my argument is that they just listened to what people told them and never bothered to look into what she actually said.
The excuse you present, honestly, doesn't make sense. "Dems call people stuff all the time so even though she specifically said something completely different--it's pretty easy to see why they assumed she meant them".

Nah, people just never listened to what she said and they already disliked her and they just added this to the pile. My only problem is that, in this situation, they were wrong and continue to bring it up. The election is over but I still see this thrown out as a valid reason for disliking her incredibly often. There are a lot of very valid reasons for disliking her that I'd be cool with. This isn't one of them because it's BS spin.

There's a reason that misusing words is considered bad outside of postmodernist-derived fields, and Hillary learned the hard way why that is.

I mean, given that the same people that harp on about the "deplorables" thing continually give Trump a pass for misusing words and even argue, "It's what's in his heart that matters--not his words!" I'd disagree.
People are perfectly willing to ignore words and their misuse.