Wow, talk about hardball. This was on CNN this AM, and it looks like the Clinton camp is tossing out some kind of not-so-veiled convention chaos blackmail card for the VP slot, and/or a way for the New York senator to have a face-saving exit strategy. The report from Suzanne Malveaux describes three scenarios being floated by people “inside Hillary’s inner circle.”
Scenario 1: Obama “ignores” Clinton and her supporters by offering the VP slot to someone else, which her camp sees as “a total dismissal of her” and is an unacceptable endgame that one Clintonista said could lead to open civil war within the party — and that this scenario is going to have consequences. This will allegedly manifest itself as women’s groups not willing to do any fundraising for Obama, and a tepid campaign by Hillary during the general campaign.
Scenario 2: Obama offers Hillary the VP slot, knowing she’ll turn it down.( Huh? This spin is weird. Why is there an assumption that she would turn it down?) The leaking Clinton camp description here is that option obviously isn’t acceptable to the Obama camp precisely because they believe she would accept, and the two camps don’t trust each other enough to see it a workable teaming.
Scenario 3: Meet and figure out some compromise for public consumption. The idea suggested here is that Obama’s campaign would cover Clinton’s enormous debt, or back her for the Senate Majority Leader position, even though the insiders have seen no indication that Hillary wants the job in the first place, since she’s still running to win.
Raw Story has the CNN video.
OK, given the fact that this is surfacing from the perspective of the Clinton campaign, what do you think the motivations are for offering up these particular scenarios that don’t really look plausible or workable (in that it benefits Obama as the prospective nominee)?
And in other, even more surreal news, Clinton invokes RFK’s assassination in a newspaper editorial board meeting to bring up “historical context” in terms of why she shouldn’t drop out before the primaries are over. WTF?
I kid you not? I don’t understand her reference to what happened to RFK except to set off a dog whistle that nominating Obama is a risk because of a fear of some whack job taking him out.
Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.This is awful. She clearly didn’t have to make her historical point about staying in the race through the end by raising RFK’s California win in the context of the assassination.“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. I don’t understand it,” she said, dismissing calls to drop out.
…Barack Obama, who leads Clinton by nearly 200 delegates and has already secured a majority of pledged delegates, has been the subject of threats. Early in the campaign, the Secret Service gave him a security detail at the request of Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois).
This is completely inappropriate in light of the fact that hate groups and white supremacists are roiling and increasing the threat rhetoric. Why stoke the crazies even more with this kind of (presumably) careless remark?
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The Tonya Harding candidate of 2008 election.
This week on Desperate White Housewives, Hillary attempts to win favor with the one she is trying to defeat.
Oh, and I wouldn’t worry too much about direct Hillary involvement … you usually have to be able to pay your assassins up front!
Well, at least nobody will feel bad if she doesn’t get the one-heartbeat-away consolation prize now.
Scenario 1 seems most plausible. Clinton has shown repeatedly over the last few months that she will burn shit down to get what she feels she is owed. and if she can’t win, she doesn’t want Obama to either.
Incidentally, is Hillary hedging her continuing run on an event that only happened ONCE before in the entire US history?
Hey maybe Saban will use that extra $1m he has to hire assassin , so Hillary can be crowned. Nevermind if she is electable. I want to know if she is sane or not.
This primary is getting weird. Blog style nuttiness.
If Obama is foolish enough to take on Clinton as VP, he’d better hire his own security forces and a food taster. I used to like her. Now she just scares me.
This one’s a complete phony created by the press. They’re always making up scenarios like this and pretending they have validity. None of the scenarios make any sense at all in the real world. I don’t think the Clinton people expect Obama to offer the VP slot, there’s never been any indication he would, and there’s no reason to think he would. Women’s fund raising groups? The guy’s raised a fortune without them and is giving every indication of not wanting anyone’s help that he doesn’t take charge of anyway.
Nope, it’s the usual press bullshit. Look for Janet Napolitano, Kathy Sibelius, or maybe Jim Webb in the VP slot. I prefer Napolitano myself. She’d give McCain a huge run for the money in his own state of Arizona and that would probably make him go even crazier.
I’d love to see that gun-totin’, moose huntin’, country doctor riding shotgun.
It’s a media fabrication? With Clinton mouthing off directly about RFK scenarios? Who knew!
I agreee Badkitty
Supers, party leaders
S H U T
T H I S
D O W N !!!!!!
Save Hillary and the Democratic party from herself
At this point she is reminding me of Pink’s - “Don’t Let Me Get Me” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx10ZrVeKBk
So there were no other campaigns she could have cited?
She couldn’t have said
“John Kerry was still campaigning in June”
“Al Gore was still campaigning in June”
“Walter Mondale was still campaining in June”
“Mike Dukakis was still campaigning in June”
“Jimmy Carter was stil campaigning in June”
etc. etc.
No she HAD to go to the assassination
The thing that many of us Obama supporters (myself included) fear.
and then she lies on top of if all
btw, this youtube is better than the autovideo above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyFqmp4wzI
from:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/23/clinton-kennedy-assassina_n_103319.html
—————
PS hillary.
according to ALL POLL available before primary, you suppose to win instead of talking about assassination.
Mrs. Clinton, thanks a bunch for reminding me of an incident I think about probably a dozen or so times a day.
1968 began with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, LBJ drops out of the election, MLK’s assassination, RFK’s assassination, the disastrous Democratic Convention in Chicago, and then is topped off by Nixon’s election to the presidency. What a wonderful year in American history.
I really would like a Hillery defender, and there are many, to explain how this is a benign comment…
?
snarky remark
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rees/hillary-clinton-why-would_b_103332.html
In an interview with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader today, Hillary Clinton brought up Bobby Kennedy’s June, 1968 assassination as an argument against her dropping out of the Democratic primary.
“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. I don’t understand it,” she said, dismissing calls to drop out.
She has a point: June is a great month for political assassinations.
Why drop out of the race before all the assassins have had their say?
After all, we know Barack Obama has received multiple death threats — because he is black, of course, and because some of our fellow citizens think he’s a secret Muslim terrorist who is going to take the oath of office on the Koran and make us all pray to Mecca five times a day with that screechy music coming over the loudspeakers(?) and then he’ll fly Air Force One into the White House(?).
And the truth is, Obama has consistently failed to win over those voters who want to see him murdered.
Personal opinion: public figures who say stuff like that should be prosecuted for incitement.
Actually, didn’t she list a number of other campaigns shortly before she made the reference to Robert Kennedy? I could swear I just saw that in the video linked above.
I guess the youtube video is “better” because it clips that part of the discussion?
Craptastic lie by HRC about her dogwhistle assassination crack. From Wikipedia:
Clinton effectively won the Democratic Party’s nomination after winning the New York Primary in early April.
The convention met in New York City, and the official tally was:
Bill Clinton 3372
Jerry Brown 596
Paul Tsongas 289
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/23/171124/700/262/521461
“Earlier today, I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Senator Kennedy waged in California in June in 1992 and 1968, and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nominating primary contests that go into June. That’s an historic fact.”
Shorter Clinton: It was historical. (Is she channeling Condi?)
No Hillary, you were asked why you were still in race, not your general knowledge of presidential race. Therefore, it implies you were hoping somebody shot Obama so you can get the seat.
OK, Fuck her.
Bringing up the RFK assassination, especially in the context of it happening in June, is just completely unacceptable.
She’s still in the race despite having lost the votes and delegates just in case someone decides to assassinate Obama?
That’s almost vile enough to make me vote for McCain over Hillary.
Almost, b/c I’m angry and not insane.
Back when things first started looking bad for Hillary, she floated the “I’d pick Obama as my VP” meme, apparently hoping he’d jump at the chance, since she still thought of herself as the *inevitable* candidate.
Obama did not reply in kind. He was really supposed to, and I think Clintonistas took it as an insult that he wasn’t that into a “Clinton/Obama” ticket. He was supposed to say that he’d give her VP and then she’d drop out.
Too fucking bad.
She knows this is it for her. If Barack wins, in 2012 either the country’s mess will be too much to clean up and he’ll be voted out, giving a Republican the seat until 2016 or he’ll be re-elected again making 2016 the next chance for a “new” president, and his VP will probably get the shot as the ‘inevitable’ candidate. McCain wins now and in 2012 she can try again. She’s too old to wait for 2016, unless she’s already in the VP slot.
I seriously want nothing to do with the Clintons ever again. Bill was a decent Republican president, but we don’t need to go back, we need to go forward with new people who can get past the conventional beltway nonsense.
Conventional Beltway was positive Hillary was in. Conventional Beltway brains need to go home.
I used to think there wasn’t much difference between the candidates, but Hillary has really turned me off so much during this campaign. No, I was never a supporter b/c I hated her war vote and her support for a ban on flag burning and her call for a move to “center” on abortion, etc. She had me for a bit because I really liked her for her “crying” moment when she got a bit choked up for her country. She seemed real and not acting.
But she’s far too willing to play Mark Penn’s game and dog-whistle and race bait.
Unacceptable for a Democrat. I don’t want her near the ticket.
And Barack is supposed to pay her debts? It’s all going to Mark Penn’s firm–let him choke on it. He didn’t deliver. Plus, Hillary should pay the little guys first, and she doesn’t.
If Obama settles any of Hillary’s debts, it should be to caterers and other small firms. Mark Penn and co. should just LEAVE.
Hillary you just gave the fat lady the tune, she’s all warmed up . . . .
it’s OVER
Pam, Amanda - everytime I shut that video down (because I can’t listen to it more than once) Explorer posts an error message and shut the window down. Could you post the youtube version, so it won’t start automatically.
thanks
You know what is really depressing about the whole Clinton campaign? When Clinton talks about policy concerns, she sounds like a really likable, down to earth policy expert with an easy skill of making complex policy relatable to a a less informed audience, without hiding its complexities.
And then it comes to horserace concerns, and she just starts spouting bullshit, completely throwing away all the credibility she gains when talking about the issues. Honestly, I think she might have won if she had ditched all the attacks and just focused her campaign on relaying issues to people, a kind of general campaign during the primary.
But she didn’t. She took the low road. And now she’s lost it all, and is digging that low road ever deeper.
I don’t see how this is a benign comment, but I can see why the possibility of assassination might have popped into Clinton’s mind. I am worried about Obama and his risk of being assassinated. Particularly since that episode in Dallas where the secret service stopped checking for guns before letting people in to see Obama speak. I hope he has private backup and is careful. And picks as his VP candidate the person he’d want to run the country if he died, not the person who will give the campaign “geographical balance” or whatever.
Hillary Clinton has officially gone insane.
What immediately sprung to my mind was all those ’suspicious’ murders that people kept trying to tie to Clinton back during his presidency. It almost sounds like a threat from her, given that past baggage.
I’m really just shocked that Hillary would say something like ‘Well, he could always get whacked at the last minute, so why should I drop out?’ as if it was a totally normal thing to say… it’s just creepy.
I am worried about Obama and his risk of being assassinated.
Yes, but you are not running against Obama, and thus it’s not in your interest for him to be taken down. It’s creepy when she says this stuff not (entirely) because it’s a racist dogwhistle, but because she’s the person who stands to benefit the most from an assassination coming to pass.
It’s kind of like if you and I were alone in a dark alley at 2 in the morning, and you had iPod earbuds in your ears, and I said to you, “You know, a lot of people get mugged around here late at night…”
“I am worried about Obama and his risk of being assassinated. Particularly since that episode in Dallas where the secret service stopped checking for guns before letting people in to see Obama speak.”
..and being worried is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. But we citizens, the Secret Service, and anybody with any sense is already more than aware of the possibility.
I don’t know if her mind just slipped, or if this is yet another dog-whistle to give any fence-sitters (if there are really any left) another reason not to vote Obama.
Really weird…
I don’t know if her mind just slipped, or if this is yet another dog-whistle to give any fence-sitters (if there are really any left) another reason not to vote Obama.
I could see it either way, but on reflection, Clinton is a politician. She is used to public speaking and watching what she says in public. That doesn’t prove that it was an intentional slip, but it does make me wonder…
I’m fuzzy on why “he might get assassinated” is a reason NOT to vote for Obama. To me, knowing that he enrages racist rednecks is a reason to vote for him, but I’m not the average American so I’ll take your word for it. And I think Opoponax is right about the context of the remark…coming from a rival it does end up sounding like a threat.
Oh, and what I want to know — her being just as revolutionary a candidate (first female president and all), why is he the big assassination risk? Why isn’t anybody worried about Hillary being assasinated by some Schaflyite? Why does Obama’s risk of assassination mean that Hillary is the obvious choice?
I know what she’s doing! She’s throwing the race, like that episode of WKRP In Cincinnati where Mr. Carlson wants to drop out of the race for City Council and can’t, so he sabotages his campaign. Eh?
No, I don’t buy it either.
She’s throwing the race,
Maybe she’s throwing it…to McCain. And hoping to be the candidate in 2012.
Because Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers are dead, but Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan are not.
I could see it either way, but on reflection, Clinton is a politician. She is used to public speaking and watching what she says in public.
As a guy who used to be a semi-regular public speaker, I gotta say that I could cut out the occasional embarrassing flub was to practice a speech multiple times until it was completely memorized. I don’t think that’s a luxury you have on a long campaign trail, or when you’re doing a lot of extemporaneous speaking. I really do think it was an error, and nothing more.
Having said that, that error is the type of thing that should be a campaign-ender. Besides sounding like she’s wishing someone would settle her opponent’s hash, she’s also just opened herself up, if someone does take a shot at Obama, to conspiracy theories from the right-wingers that she hired the hit.
Make that “THE ONLY WAY I could cut out the occasional embarrassing flub”…
Stupid intarwebs, not proofreading my posts for me…
The YouTube is now up.
Yes, people are worried about Obama being assassinated … but there isn’t any need to even mention it because there is a precident for what happens. If something happened to Obama, it would be totally odd if Clinton wasn’t the heir apparent … unless she had something to do with it or doesn’t start monitoring the produce of her larynx in short order.
And while it may indeed have some validity as a legitimate concern, it’s not a very good reason to stay in the race at this point.
Think about it…
John Edwards did not officially “end” his campaign back in February - he “suspended” it, meaning that he decided to step aside for the time and let the other candidates play it out, but he continued to hold on to his right to jump back in at any point in time if he later chose to do so.
Hillary could suspend her campaign today, and God forbid something should occur which would prevent Obama from becoming the nominee, the Party could still give her the nomination in the event of a real catastrophe.
She has no chance of becoming the nominee using the normal metrics, and in making comments such as this, she’s making it nearly impossible for any superdelegate of good conscience to jump off the Obama bandwagon to her side.
I’m convinced that she knows in her heart that she has lost… and that she has her eyes on the prize in 2012. But the only realistic way for that to happen is if John McCain becomes the 44th POTUS. She WANTS John McCain to win, and she will keep up this charade of a “campaign” as long as feasibly possible in order to enable that to happen.
Yes, of course once Obama becomes the nominee, she’ll put on as much of a dog-and-pony show to give the impression that she is behind the Democratic Nominee, but in her heart, she will hope and pray everyday until November 4th that somehow John McCain manages to take out Obama in the General Election.
She has become a truly despicable, vile, base, unprincipled politician - nothing more. She stands for nothing but her own ambitions.
I don’t want her on the ticket, and I don’t even want her in the US Senate anymore… she has gone way too far now. I will never respect the Clintons again.
Because it plays upon the public’s fears about political assassinations, which usually have devastating effects not only for the target themselves, but for the whole country.
I believe most progressives aren’t going to use the “he might get assassinated” fear as a reason to not vote for him - but it may cause centrists and independents to be a little more leary, particularly if it’s something placed at the front of their minds. Even if they really like the candidate, some may be reluctant to vote for him if they really are afraid it could cost him his life.
Sadly, I fully expect the “he might get assassinated” meme to pop up a LOT more once this race shifts completely to general election mode when it’s just Obama vs. McCain. Though nobody would have the audacity to support such an atrocity, merely mentioning the possibility of it redundantly can and will have detrimental effects to the Obama Campaign.
We are a fearful nation, after all.
Calling all Hillary supporters: let’s hear your excuse for this statement from your intelligent, educated, and experienced political operator.
Really, she might as well join Lieberman outside the party. Heck, she might as well join McCain in the GOP, for all that she’s singing his tune. Either way, the Democrats would be well rid of this pandering, triangulating exemplar of entitlement and ego.
And Hillary will never ever go away…at least 30 more years of this stuff!
Pro Hillary blogs reaction so far:
-She losts myDD
www.mydd.com/
-She losts steve de soto
www.theleftcoaster.com/
talkleft is staying out of the bruhaha.
(I think she knows the statement is bad all around)
www.talkleft.com/
still strongly spinning for her (I don’t think this blog will have any credibility left after election, unless they plan to whipe out their archive)
riverdaughter.wordpress.com/
spinning strong (pure blogs for hire. not traditional bloggers/outside blogosphere.)
noquarterusa.net/blog/
www.taylormarsh.com/
staying mum (usual jingle)
shakespearessister.blogspot.com/
digbysblog.blogspot.com/
—————
I don’t know any good size blog left. I don’t track sub 3K blog.
How would an “independent” Clinton/Lieberman ticket play out?
Would it pull more from BO or from McSame?
I think this is a phony controversy and shame on the Obama campaign for fanning the flames with their response. She clearly was not threatening or inciting but citing historical events as an example of past lengthy campaigns. That is clear. Also, Squashed, the press has been fond of mentioning Bill Clinton’s clinching the nomination in June for some time now.
How would an “independent” Clinton/Lieberman ticket play out?
Would it pull more from BO or from McSame?
Unfortunately, it would pull more from Obama. Those “hard-working, white Americans” she panders to wouldn’t vote for a woman in the general election anyhow, and they’d be even less likely to do so if she had a Jewish running mate.
However, she would draw away DLC Democrats, PNAC fantasists, and 1960s- and ’70s-vintage feminists (and their younger imitators) who’ve demonstrated they’ll blindly support any semi-viable candidate who lacks a Y chromosome.
I doubt Hillary will do an independent run, though. Instead she’ll spend the next four years shivving President Obama in the back alongside Lieberman in the Senate.
In light of Huckabee’s NRA gag, and Ted Kennedy’s freshly discovered brain tumor, she morphed the two into a gag-reflex inducing gaffe that puts her so far beyond the pale she’s fallen off the edge of the flat earth.
“Who will rid me of this troublesome pri^H^H^H opponent?” acting as if June 1968 were good times, good times. Sounds like a badly mangled Limbot operation Chaos script.
Even if it was only temporary insanity, it’s consistent with all her other Sunset Blvd. Moments. I’m afraid this has been Hillary’s close up, Mr. and Mrs. DeMille. It’s the pictures that got small–youtube sized as a matter of fact, and this one will be on heavy rotation. This is not the sort of mistake made by future presidents, especially by those behind in every conceivable metric. As has been said better by others, this is an ex-candidate.
A new LOW in politics has been descended into by the AWFUL Clintons.
Now, if you can’t beat your opponent with ideas and BOGUS “experience” and you CANNOT incite racial hatred against your opponent, you speak of a wish that your opponent be off’ed in June before the primary!
SHAME on BILLARY. You ARE UNFIT to be President!!
I think if I were to give rough sense, Hillary online poll just shrunk some 5%. She pretty much lost all remaining big blogs. One more gaffe, her presence online is going to be pretty much history. (not something she can fix in 3-4 weeks.)
The media has long since abandoned her. (except maybe CNN)
So, I don’t know how she is going to do long summer battle. I guess we have to wait for May 31st RBC meeting.
Pam, Thank you!
Y’know, I was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt, because when I heard the audio of the “hard-workin’ white people” quote, she sounded quite crispy around the edges…exhausted, stammery.
This campaign has been grueling, and there’s a reason campaign workers tend to be young.
But this one? No. She’s measured in her speech, presenting this as a perfectly rational option.
This would be unforgivable for me, who remembers watching Bobby Kennedy’s body pass by on the train and learning grown men could cry.
In light of the news about Ted Kennedy, it’s horrible.
I was initially an Edwards supporter, and that the MSM pretty much shut him out from contention, I was upset. I didn’t know who to support. I’m sort of contrarian by nature, and when all the sexist BS started popping up about Clinton, I supported her. Politicians are politicians, I expected Obama to disappoint me from his “unity” talk. But this… This is really beyond the pale. I have had my own fears that Obama would be killed, and I still do. This is a racist, sexist country. But to outright suggest it as a possible nominee… wow. I thought the gas tax holiday was bad enough. This is insane. A democrat bringing up the assassination of another democratic nominee… Hillary, please… shut it down. And let Jim Webb be the VP. Shut it down now so you can run for senate again in two years and then re-run in 8 years. Make up for this with honestly progressive votes in the senate. I want to see a female president in my lifetime. But this year, I want to vote for Obama.
This is seriously beyond the pale. I’ve gone from Enthusiastic Hillary Supporter! to Ambivalent “Any Democrat!” Supporter to “Well, I’d Still Be Just As Happy To Vote For Hillary!” to “Yikes!” to “Jesus, This Is Ridiculous!” to my current “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?” state. I honestly can’t respect anyone who would look at that and start whining about context. We’ve all seen the context, and it doesn’t help! Where does the assassination bit fit into the context you’re whining about?
I’ve managed to live with the fact that a lot of Hillary’s supporters are overtly or covertly racist and have said some really sick stuff because it wasn’t coming out of Hillary’s mouth. But this? There’s just no ignoring it.
Ms. Clinton’s comment re the RFK assassination really sucks ( the first time I used this word in my life ). This is no longer just absurd, worse than her previous race-baiting, and encourages radical racists to do harm to Mr. Obama. Heaven forbid he gets harmed or she would get haunted for the rest of her life, if she has any conscience left. And how insensitive she is to the Kennedys at this time when their patriarch is ill. Mr. Clinton’s comment re she being promoted to becoming VP bet adds gas to the fire and sends shivers to my spine. He reminds me of what happened to JFK. Yucky to the nth degree!!!
Doesn’t lose a beat.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/23/obama-rush-limbaugh-lou-d_n_103315.html
Obama: Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs Responsible For Rise In Hate Crimes Against Hispanics
At a fundraiser in Florida Thursday night, Barack Obama accused anti-immigrant crusaders Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh of “ginning things up” to such an extent that there was a rise in hate crimes against Hispanics last year.
“A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year,” Obama said. “If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.”
Here’s what I wrote on Open Left a little while ago.
Even though I usually respect the opinions of many of the people who have commented above, I don’t see at all how anyone can truly believe that Clinton is rooting, hoping for, or in any way trying to hasten an assassination of Obama. Contra a poster above, I thought she did seem very weary during the interview, and it is understandable that she’d mention 1968 above other recent campaigns because it was a closely contested primary (caveats about the greater power of superdelegates at the time notwithstanding).
That she also mentioned RFK’s assassination does not mean that she was using that assassination as a justification to stay in the race. Why did she mention it at all? I don’t know, but the rationales provided here and elsewhere, that she did it to intentionally bring up the possibility of it happening again, seem very, very farfetched to me. This is Hillary Clinton we’re talking about here, not Jesse Helms.
So, if this was unintentional, what about when she mentioned it 2 1/2 months ago, per Time magazine? My question would be, if it’s really a dogwhistle, why would she only mention it about once every three months? I mean, if we’ve learned anything from the Republicans, isn’t that you should hammer your point again and again, and then again some more? Again, this just doesn’t add up to me, and I’m having a really hard time seeing how it adds up for anyone else.
In the end, however, if there’s something I think we’ve all come to realize with respect to beliefs in other’s motives or in what kind of people they are, it comes down to what we want to believe about them. A lot of Amanda’s Cog Psych pieces talk about this dynamic: If you start to think poorly of someone, everything they do starts to be seen through that lens, which only accumulates more evidence that they’re a lousy person. In that context, given Clinton’s past comments about “white working class Americans”, and how she’d walk out of the church if Reverend Wright were her pastor, it’s clear that the pump has been primed for people to see her comments in the worst possible light, but only in the way that people use heuristics as a replacement for rational thought. I thought we in the “reality-based” community were trying to correct for that instinct, not embrace it.
It kind of makes me question the notion of “kabuki outrage”. Maybe it really isn’t kabuki at all, and when people get upset at, say, Sen. Durbin saying that the methods that we’ve been using on prisoners is reminiscent of the KGB and Nazi Germany, because they interpret him as comparing our troops to Nazis, maybe that’s what they actually believe. Of course, to get someone to believe that a Democrat would say that about our troops, you have to get them to believe that a Democrat could say that about the troops.
I’d like to think that we want to work towards breaking this kind of cycle of heuristic outrage, because Democrats are far more likely to be on the short end of the stick, but the first step is to recognize it in action, and I think a lot of us are failing to do that in this instance.
NY Expat May 24, 2008 at 5:18 am
That she also mentioned RFK’s assassination does not mean that she was using that assassination as a justification to stay in the race. Why did she mention it at all? I don’t know …
Yeah…she just want to be a wikipedia editor.
If you can say “kabuki outrage” than at least you have to admit you can identify outrage of differing origin. If you say heuristic “outrage” then I can say yer the mop brigade, the damage control crew.
But hey, he said, she said. This is meta talk about the origin and notion of outrage.
The basic question remains:
1. Hillary has no chance of winning under regulation. The math is not there.
2. She is spinning, delegitimizing the process and plan to blow up the party seeking divisive rule change.
3. Increasingly even that is now nearly impossible.
so the question is WHY is she blowing up the party on nearly impossible math?
She gives answer:
Hey, if Obama is assassinated in June, I get the seat.
cog psych and heuristic outrage that. (Am I the only one who think Clinton spinner are so deep inside their spin, they don’t even know what the fuck they are talking about anymore.)
“So, if this was unintentional, what about when she mentioned it 2 1/2 months ago, per Time magazine?”
2 1/2 months ago she didn’t look so desperate, and people probably gave her the benefit of the doubt because maybe she could pull it off and talk about going until June was just premature.
Now, she has no probable route to the nomination, she’s deeply in debt, and her rhetoric has been getting worse and worse.
It’s context. If your coworker jokes about cleaning out the cash box, you’ll see it differently (and take it more seriously) if he’s facing foreclosure or bankruptcy.
I’m really not clear what you’re saying here, or if the second use of quotations on just one word is intentional. Feel free to clarify.
Ironically, I agree with all three of your points, just not the conclusion afterwards. Also ironically, if you had bothered to click on the link, you’d have read that I’m an Obama supporter. But by all means, keep believing what you want to believe, which reenforces my point.
The incident, it seems to me, does tell us two other things.
The first is that the strategy of the Clinton camp, of continuing to campaign even after victory at the polls became numerically impossible–in hopes that Obama might stumble and alienate sufficient numbers of superdelegates–was not crazy. I don’t approve of it, but that it could work or could have worked seems clear. It could easily have been Obama who stumbled yesterday. Ironically, it was Clinton.
The second thing the incident tells us is how traumatized the nation still is by those horrible killings 40 years ago, and how much unfinished business of healing those wounds there is. Hillary didn’t mean to pick at the scab. But she did. And we bled a little, all over again.
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/24/65451/0542/860/521896
SICK. Disgusting. And yet revealing. Hillary Clinton is staying in the race in the event some nut kills Barack Obama.
It could happen, but what definitely has happened is that Clinton has killed her own chances of being vice president. She doesn’t deserve to be elected dog catcher anywhere now.
Her shocking comment to a South Dakota newspaper might qualify as the dumbest thing ever said in American politics.
As far as I know, it would be illegal for Obama to use his campaign funds to pay off Clinton’s debt.
Keith Olberman tore into Clinton last night. I don’t think I have ever seen him this angry.
Actually, I’m mostly with NY Expat on this one, and I have never for a moment supported HRC for president. What I think she was really getting at, in a subtextual way, was that the calls for her to drop out because we can’t afford the drama were silly given that much worse events have occurred in previous primaries (that 1968 was an electoral disaster and her timetable comparison is pointless are both on the spin-to-dishonesty spectrum, but not worthy of offense). It’s basically a ‘look, primaries can go on well into June, we’ve had much bigger problems than contentious delegate races, and the party survived’ spin, not a ‘well, he could be assassinated and you’ll need a strong backup’ dog whistle. She was also certainly banking on the relative ignorance of the average voter– her campaign is nothing if not a chronicle of seemingly ridiculous (to us) statements designed to get a favorable response from low-info voters– by citing a period so chaotic and historically significant that most of her target audience would at least have a vague memory of it. After all, I doubt that many of her voters really remember (if they ever noticed or cared much) about the 1980 Kennedy challenge, the 1984 Hart/Jackson/Mondale battles, or any of the other examples political junkies and members of the media would consider more appropriate analogies.
I’ll tell you what’s depressing, though– it takes a clumsy-ass Democrat to completely screw up the low-grade demagoguery that the GOP has turned into an art form over the past thirty years or so.
Why is it a dogwhistle?
Because in order to be a dogwhistle, it must be extremely subtle and hard to immediately detect on the surface.
If she were hammering the point home like the Republicans, it would no longer be a dogwhistle, because everyone would notice it.
For hillz shrill squad who now is whining about fake outrage: let’s see what lame stuff has been pulled: elitist, bittergate, sexism …
everytime these bunch open mouth in the next few weeks. I am shoving the word ‘assassination’.
Incidentally, Hillary just lost the moderate baby boomer in the party with that RFK remark. And now AA voters are beyond slightly cold on her. She has core 3 groups left: lobbyists/DC circle, white woman over 40, and Appalachian.
None of them care about hillz blogging crew. ahahahahaaa…..
(2) She could invoke 1972, 1984, and especially 1980 and argue that she wanted to be able to contest the convention.
This is probably the actual reason that Hillary wants to stay in the race — and it is fascinating (if not downright shocking) that these three years of contested campaigns are not mentioned as examples of a nomination contest extending into — and past — June. This is because to cite these years means essentially saying that she shouldn’t be asked to leave because she might want to contest the convention. She doesn’t want to do this. That could be because she doesn’t want to contest the convention — in which case, hooray for her — or there could be a more sinister reason, as I suggest way down below. But let’s remember: the precedent of these three years is her best justification for staying in the race.
Let’s remind ourselves about what happened during each of these years.
1972: The 1972 convention is the second-biggest nightmare, after 1968, in recent Democratic Party history. While 1980 is the one that many of us think about having the endgame we fear — more on that below — 1972 is the one that has most in common with our worst-case scenarios. To cite Wikipedia’s article:
McGovern had amassed the most delegates to the convention by using a grass roots campaign that was powered by opposition to the Vietnam War. Many traditional Democratic leaders and politicians felt that McGovern’s delegate count did not reflect the wishes of most Democratic voters. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter helped to spearhead a “Stop McGovern” campaign. The stop-McGovern forces tried unsuccessfully to alter the delegate composition of the California delegation. California had a “winner-take-all” primary format, which was contrary to the delegate selection rules. So even though McGovern only won the California primary by a 5% electoral margin, he won all 273 of their delegates to the convention. The anti-McGovern group argued for a more proportional distribution of the delegates, while the McGovern forces stressed that the rules for the delegate selection had been set and the Stop McGovern alliance was trying to change the rules after the game.
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/25/44929/5071/365/522391