A class act

Yes, I’m talking about Hillary Clinton. And yes, I’m being sarcastic. From Jonathan Martin at Politico:

Hillary Clinton today cited the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the 1968 presidential campaign to explain why she was remaining in the race despite long odds.

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” Clinton told the editorial board of a South Dakota newspaper. ” I don’t understand it,” Clinton added, alluding to the calls for her to quit.

Clinton made the statement after pointing out that her husband didn’t lock up the nomination until June of 1992, trying to point out that, by past history, it’s not late in the campaign.

Whatever one thinks of her publicly raising the possibility of her opponent getting assassinated, it’s also worth pointing out that this argument makes no logical sense. Even if she conceded the nomination to Obama, yet he then became unavailable or truly unviable for some reason (illness, scandal, whatever) between now and August, the party could still turn to Clinton as the nominee, whether she had suspended her campaign in May, or in June, or never. By her logic, she should keep fighting hard for the nomination until November, just in case she needs to step in and be the nominee. (And who knows, she may try it.)

I’m sure she is already regretting these remarks. Clinton’s reputation as a consummate Machiavelli who always knows exactly what she is doing is belied by the way she has run her campaign and the series of dumb things that started coming out of her mouth when her campaign became desperate. The “sniper fire” story, the “hard-working Americans, white Americans” remark, and this reference to RFK’s assassination were surely more damaging to her than to Obama, and I’m sure she didn’t think through the ramifications when she said them.

(And of course, the argument that Bill Clinton also didn’t lock up “wrap up” the nomination until June of 1992 is ridiculous. While it’s technically true that he didn’t win more than half of the delegates until June, he was the presumptive nominee by early April — in a year where the primaries had started a month later than they did this year.)

ADDED: Talking Points Memo excerpted the video snippet from the interview, which I’ve pasted below. I have to admit, it looks like she had no idea that she was breaking a kind of taboo when she brough up RFK’s assassination, which supports what I figured, which was that this was a dumb slip, rather than a calculated effort to scare superdelegates into the nomination or encourage any psychopaths to commit any heinous crimes. Either way, it’s obviously a huge mistake, and one more nail in the coffin of her campaign. Her follow-up remarks, shown at the TPM post linked above, seem to show that she realizes what an enormous mistake it was. She obviously sincerely regrets the comment — I won’t speculate on whether she regrets it because it was morbid and tasteless, or because it damages her campaign. Here’s the clip of the comments that set off the firestorm: