HRC evokes the "A" word...

Wow, where to begin on this one? In a newspaper editorial board interview in South Dakota, Hillary Clinton evoked the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June 1968. As the NY Times put it, "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defended staying in the Democratic nominating contest on Friday by pointing out that her husband had not wrapped up the nomination until June 1992, adding, 'We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.'” What the NYT did not say but was implicit in her comments was that she plans to hang around because "we never know what is going to happen".

The inappropriateness of this comment is mind numbing--that she could think it is one thing; that she could actually say it is another. The Kennedy family is once again going through yet another very public family tragedy with Senator Kennedy's illness. The Obama camp and the Black community were also offended and outraged. We can not forget that community has lost many of its political leaders including Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Malcolm X to assassination. And HRC is indeed running against a black man who was started to receive death threats on the very day he announced his candidacy.

This is not the first time that HRC had referred to the 1968 assassination. She did so before in March 6th of this year to Time while basically trying to make the same point--that she should stay in the race. And she was on stage in New Hampshire when a campaign supporter referred to the Obama/JFK comparison and then reminded the audience that JFK had been assassinated. So her pathetic sort of apology and excuse--that she was thinking about Senator Kennedy fighting his brain tumor--was more than a little disingenuous.

Apart from the shit storm these comments have unleashed, the fact is Hillary Clinton is simply wrong on both of her references. Bill Clinton had essentially wrapped up his nomination in April of 1992 when his last major opponent Paul Tsongas suspended his campaign. The first primary in the 1968 campaign was New Hampshire in March, not January as it was in this election cycle so it was four months, not the interminable six months of this campaign. And there were no political candidate debates in the summer of 1967 as a prelude to the actual campaign as there were this time.

But her error of fact is far outweighed by the subtext of her remarks. Her comments have to be viewed in the context of her campaign which went negative over a variety of topics from allegations of drug use to plagiarism to sexism to racism to experience to patriotism to McCarthy-like guilt by association to commercials featuring Osama Bin Laden and more--all brought up and played out by the Clinton team. Pundits called it the "kitchen sink" strategy and it was not pretty. In my view it was despicable. So I am loathe to give her a pass regardless of how fatigued she claimed to be or whatever feeble excuse she seems to offer. She is a lawyer and she knows, despite her campaign protestations to the contrary, that words matter. And the fact that she has gone to this well several times (more on this in a moment) suggests her real intent.

The problem here isn't just the insensitivity, the utter stupidity and the callousness of her remarks. But what she said--as stupid as it is-- reveals a disturbing pattern: her depraved indifference to the truth and her very willingness to go to the dark side.

Keith Olberman offered a time line where the Clinton campaign used this many times in different incarnations: sometimes with the word "assassination"; other times without. This allusion was and is very much a part of the Clinton campaign.

We know she told the Bosnia story at least three different times (all recorded on video)and then lied again when she claimed it was fatigue. One time is understandable; three times suggests something else.

The same holds true for willful misrepresentations of her participation in SCHIP, the Northern Ireland Peace Treaty, NAFTA and so forth.

Then there's her revisionist history on Michigan and Florida where she pretends to want to see every vote counted although her only path to the nomination is to have the super delegates strip ALL voters of their choice and be anointed.

HRC agreed to the punishment handed out by the DNC to each state for moving their primaries up. She has once again gone back on her word which suggests it means nothing. And quite frankly, she did indeed campaign in Florida, holding four different fundraisers/events in the state after promising NOT to campaign there. Then, after a series of losses to Barack Obama, she traveled to Florida on the evening of its discredited primary and proceeded to claim victory even though no one else campaigned there and even though the results were essentially a name recognition contest for those Democrats who chose to vote--many did not.

And now she claims to be leading in popular vote--a statement which no media has challenged her on even though it is NOT TRUE. By ignoring the caucus states, HRC is essentially disenfranchising them but that is somehow ok for her and obsessed fanatical supporters.

As it was ok for her to run a truly insidious, negative, racist campaign, all the while complaining that she is the victim of sexism. When asked to specifically reference any incidents of sexism on the part of the Obama campaign, Clinton and her supporters have come up empty.

Once again Hillary Clinton can not bring herself to apologize for a mistake. She has never really come to grips with her Iraq war resolution vote. And once again she offered a tepid apology to those "who may have been offended". Well any thinking person should be offended.

Hillary Clinton is a victim of her own arrogance, her singular obsession with winning at any cost and a really pathetic political campaign--the responsibility of which falls squarely on her shoulders. She has been given much more opportunity than other candidates. If her name was not Clinton, she would not be a candidate for President much less a US Senator. If it were not for her name, she would have been driven from the campaign much earlier. Can you imagine if Obama had lost 12 primaries and caucuses in a row? The Clintonistas would be screaming.

Her supporters might decry the sexism that exists in this country but 1. it is not the reason for her failure and 2. it does not somehow trump the racism that Barack Obama has to contend with not only from small minded Americans in Appalachia but from HRC supporters who justify their own bad behavior by finger pointing at others.

Over at the Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh blog, some of these same supporters are openly calling for HRC to be the Vice Presidential nominee so when Obama is assassinated, she can take her rightful place as POTUS. These people are crazy bit only a little more so than their preferred candidate.

Time for the super delegates to step up and put us all out of our misery. Hillary Rodham Clinton is simply not fit to be President. She lacks the one attribute required of a real leader: a moral compass. We have seen over the past seven plus years the consequences of so called leadership from an administration that does not possess such a thing.

This is Memorial Day weekend so let’s not forget the brave Americans who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. And let's also remember the more than 4000 American servicemen and women that have died, in part due to the vote of HRC-- a vote she still has not properly apologized or been held accountable for.

HRC supported the only filly in the Kentucky Derby and that horse not only finished second but had to be put down.

I am suggesting nothing other than this is the perfect metaphor for her campaign.

Hypocrisy of Clinton Supporters

I'm quite sure there is sexism in this campaign directed at HRC just like there is some degree of racism directed at Obama. Any rational person should find both disgusting and repugnant.

What I find more interesting is the disconnect between the ideals and the actions of the Clinton supporters.

I'm quite certain that many Clinton supporters reviled the political tactics of Lee Atwater or Karl Rove as they were used against Democratic candidates like Gore and Kerry. Yet in their desire to see a woman nominee, her supporters turned a blind eye to the type of campaign she ran. The media euphemistically calls it the kitchen sink but we all know to what they are referring.

Clinton invoked a variety of unflattering and negative techniques from race baiting to questioning his competence and patriotism to guilt by association to accusations of drug use to gender issues to plagiarism as well as purposefully and willfully misrepresenting his positions (and later, as we all found out after Ohio, hers as well). She also took the extraordinary position of criticizing Obama while asserting that she and the Republican nominee were well qualified to run the country. The state of her campaign suggests otherwise.

Now I understand that many Clinton supporters will NOT even acknowledge she has run this type of campaign. But she did. And this is why an ex-Edwards supporter (me) became an Obama supporter.

Some obscenely obsessed Clinton supporters even argue that Obama has played the race card, that he has been sexist and that he started the negative campaigning. What world do these people live in? This is so disturbingly disingenuous that it is almost tragic in its simplicity and stupidity.

Obama started with nothing against the vaunted Clinton political machine. HRC was to be coronated on Super Tuesday. But along the way something happened and the Clintons were beaten fairly and squarely by a candidate who played by the rules.

In my view Obama had the greater burden, apart from the obvious disadvantage against going up again the Clinton machine. As this campaign proved, this country still struggles with the racial divide. The idea of a black man attacking a white woman in any form--even in a political context--is still unfathomable. Yet the Clinton supporters as evidenced by the clueless Geraldine Ferraro actually tried to make the case that Obama somehow had it easier because he is a black man in America. Well we all know how priviledged black men are in American culture...

The ridiculousness of that argument is apparent to all but not to Clinton supporters.

What gives? What allows one to check his or her own sense of integrity and ethics at the door in order to "win" a political campaign? Clinton supporters rationalize it by arguing that this is just politics, just part of the political process and if you can not take it, get out. It feeds this mythology of her toughness which I think they are confusing with her sense of entitlement.

For me this is just an excuse to behave badly. These are the kinds of tactics that most of us despise and want to change, hence Obama's public appeal. How these otherwise forward thinking people can allow themselves to be part of such distasteful practices is beyond me.

I'm sure Clinton was victimized by sexism. But when the full post mortem on her campaign is over, it will show that the candidate herself is mostly responsible for its failure. To plagiarize Ring Lardner, I'm not sure she and her supporters will like themselves in the morning.