Was Senator Clinton expressing an assassination wish for Senator Obama this afternoon? Not consciously, I don’t think. The argument is that she was thinking in terms of time line — nomination campaigns often are still being fought in June. That probably is what she was thinking. But there are a lot of other, and more recent, examples she could have used that didn’t involve death.
Even without the assassination reference, evoking 1968 is dishonest, because the nomination process happened on a later schedule in those days. For example, the New Hampshire primary was in March instead of January then.
Even if she didn’t mean anything by it, evoking assassination showed terrible judgment, and I understand it’s not the first time she has mentioned the Robert Kennedy assassination to explain why she won’t quit. Of all people, she should know the world is full of loony tunes who take it upon themselves to act out such suggestions.
For that reason I have a long-standing policy of deleting comments that express a wish for someone to be assassinated, even if the commenter is joking, and even if the potential target is someone I don’t like.
Clinton supporters are whining that people are picking on poor Hillary again, making a Big Deal out of an innocent remark. These are the same people who won’t let go of Obama’s “bitter” remark, which some argue was taken out of context. I say live by the gotcha, die (metaphorically speaking) by the gotcha.
Quoting the Rude One: “To Clinton’s campaign and its supporters, who have been holding out for some gaffe by Obama that would take him down: How’s that working out for ya?”
Senator Clinton has since issued a kind of non-apology apology, in which she sort of expresses regret to the Kennedy family but not to Senator Obama. She still doesn’t seem to grasp what it was she said.