Clinton's RFK remark casts a pall

Hillary Clinton was in damage-control mode this week after she invoked the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to justify her remaining in the Democratic primary race. Speaking to a South Dakota newspaper last week, Clinton was making the case that Democratic nominating contests frequently ran until June. After noting that her husband didn’t seal his nomination in 1992 until the June California primary, she remarked: “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” The comment caused an immediate uproar, with the Barack Obama campaign calling it “unfortunate” and many commentators suggesting that Clinton had in effect said she was staying in the race in case harm came to Obama.

Clinton quickly apologized, saying she was merely citing “historical examples” of other lengthy races. Still, the fallout threatened to extinguish her fading hopes of securing the nomination by winning the support of the party’s superdelegates, and even dampened speculation about her prospects for the No. 2 slot on the ticket. Her hopes dimmed further after the Democratic National Committee said that no more than half of the Michigan and Florida delegations would be seated at the convention, as punishment for their holding primaries ahead of the approved schedule.

Clinton’s reference to Bobby Kennedy’s murder was “inartful,” said the New York Daily News in an editorial. “But that’s all she was: inartful.” Let’s be fair: In a long, exhausting campaign, candidates slip up. “To suggest that she has somehow pinned her hopes on the possibility of her rival dying is grotesque.”

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What else is new? said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. Obama supporters are skilled at ginning up “fake Clinton scandals,” such as when they cried racism after Clinton noted that it took LBJ’s skills to turn Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision into legislation. But it’s not merely “absurd” to accuse Clinton of wishing Obama harm, it’s self-defeating. Obama needs Clinton’s help, and her supporters’ votes, to win the general election. He won’t get it if his camp trafficks in such nonsense.

But who can blame them for taking offense? said Libby Copeland in The Washington Post. “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. It sounds almost like wishful thinking.”