First Door on the Left

In case you have been hiding under a rock for the past 36 hours or so, Hillary Clinton had this to say during an interview with a newspaper editorial board in South Dakota yesterday:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

(Actually, her husband “wrapped up” the nomination after the Illinois primary in March of 1992, but why would we expect his wife to know that?)

Basically, what she said was that she needs to remain in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though there is no chance she will win, because Barack Obama may be assassinated.

There are those who are trying to cover for Mrs. Clinton, saying that what she said was just a poor choice of words and she was only stating that other nominating contests had lasted into June and she could not understand why this one should be different. I’m not buying it. Hillary Clinton is a very smart and intelligent woman. She knew exactly what she was saying. She was employing the Rovian tactic of fear mongering. “If Senator Obama is killed next month and I am not still in the race, who are you going to turn to?” (The unfortunate reality is that we would probably turn to her, even if she is not still running for the nomination.)

Even Barack Obama has tried to cover for her…

“I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make and I think that is what happened here. Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it and I will take her at her word on that.”

While I am in awe of Mr. Obama’s chivalry, I must disagree with him for several reasons. First, he pretty much had to say that, otherwise he would alienate all the die-hard heroine worshipers who are still clinging to the hems of Mrs. Clinton’s pant suits. (Fact, not misogyny (the Clintonista’s byword these days.)) Second, if she is going to get careless with the statements she makes under the pressures of campaigning, what is she going to do under the pressures of the presidency? And, finally, she most certainly did intend every word she said.

Libby Copeland, staff writer on The Washington Post understands…

Hillary Clinton Raises the Specter of the Unspeakable

Smart candidates don’t invoke the possibility of their opponents being killed. This seems so obvious it shouldn’t need to be said, but apparently, it needs to be said.

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” Hillary Clinton said yesterday, referencing the fact that past nomination contests have stretched into June to explain why she hasn’t heeded calls to exit the Democratic race. She was in an editorial board meeting with a South Dakota newspaper, and she didn’t even seem to notice she’d just uttered the unutterable.

The nation’s political science students, our future strategists and campaign managers, would do well to pay attention to this moment. There are taboos in presidential politics, and this is one of the biggest. To raise the specter of a rival’s assassination, even unintentionally, is to make a truly terrible thing real. It sounds like one might be waiting for a terrible thing to happen, even if one isn’t. It sounds almost like wishful thinking.[..]

Clinton issued a statement apologizing “if” she’d been in “any way offensive,” and a spokesman tried to clarify what she meant.

“She was talking about the length of the race and using the ‘68 election as an example of how long the races in the past have gone,” Howard Wolfson said, missing the point. What she meant was: We can wait a little longer to know who the Democratic nominee is. What she said was: assassinated.[..]

The fear of a president or a presidential candidate being shot or assassinated is horrifying precisely because recent history teaches us that it can happen. We don’t need anybody to remind us, and we certainly don’t need anybody to remind whatever suggestible wackos might be lurking in the shadows.

In the context of Obama, Clinton’s words broke a double taboo, because since the beginning of his candidacy, some of Obama’s supporters have feared that his race made him more of a target than other presidential hopefuls. Obama was placed under Secret Service protection early, a full year ago. To be unaware that one’s words tap into a monumental fear that exists in a portion of the electorate — a fear that Obama’s race could get him killed — is an unusual mistake for a serious and highly disciplined presidential candidate.

Hillary Clinton has disqualified herself for either the presidency or the vice presidency. She probably should not even be a senator, but there’s isn’t much we can do about that now. Those who are willing to overlook her hateful and ill-intentioned remark are blind to the realities of the age in which we live. It is past time for the leadership of the Democratic party to show some leadership and insist that she withdraw immediately from the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Tags: 2008, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, presidential campaign