Clinton and Kennedy

Last week, Hillary Clinton did exactly the opposite of what she needed to do in order to have a shot at the Democratic nomination. She needed opponent Barack Obama to slip up, to say something offensive or stupid, to somehow sabotage his own campaign at the last second. Instead, Clinton was the one shooting herself in the foot.\nAs you almost definitely know, Clinton implied – accidentally or otherwise – that part of the reason why she was remaining in the primary race was because there was a possibility that a race-changing event might occur. You know, something simple like Obama being shot to death.\nShe used Robert Kennedy’s June California primary win in 1968 – and subsequent assassination – to try to make the point that this year’s ultra-marathon was not that unusual. \nThere are several facets of this characterization that are bothersome. First of all, it’s hard to buy the idea that Clinton misspoke, or that she didn’t realize mentioning assassination when her opponent has been compared – in one way or another – to John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. is a really bad idea. \nClinton’s entire campaign has been based around bludgeoning the public with her experience and her 600 years of political knowledge. If she’s ready to lead on day one, then she should know better. And she does. If she was not consciously trying to put the possibility of Obama’s death into the public mind, she would have mentioned RFK’s campaign in California, not his assassination. Or she might have mentioned one of the other long campaigns she’s supposedly using as inspiration.\nNow, though, Clinton’s campaign is accusing Obama’s of blowing a nonissue up into “the death of Hillary Clinton” and fanning the flames of a controversy that doesn’t exist. Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign and one of my favorite people ever, claimed that Obama’s people “ ... tried to take these words out of context.”\nFanning the flames of controversy? Taking words out of context? I’m sorry, has McAuliffe been in the woods for the past couple of months? Perhaps he missed the bombardment aimed at Obama over Jeremiah Wright? Besides that, there’s been very little out of the Obama camp about the Kennedy reference, aside from the candidate himself saying he didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Most of the outrage has been coming from the media. \nThe point is that, really, both sides here are right. It’s safe to assume Hillary Clinton wasn’t trying to send a signal to her supporters that she’d put out a bounty on Obama. But she really shouldn’t be using political assassination as a part of her reasoning for staying in the race. But there’s a history of assassination in this country – from the Kennedys to Reagan, from Lincoln to the Roosevelts – and a history of racially motivated murder. This is really a subject that would be best left alone, even in desperation or by accident.