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Clinton, you
invoked a political nightmare
Olbermann: Referencing RFK's assassination as a
reason for staying in the race is unforgiveable
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
updated 6:29 p.m. PT, Fri., May. 23, 2008
Asked if her continuing fight for the nomination
against Senator Obama hurts the Democratic
party, Sen. Hillary Clinton replied, "I don't.
Because again, I've been around long enough. You
know, 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. You know, I just don't understand
it. You know, there's lots of speculation about
why it is. “
The comments were recorded and we showed them to
you earlier and they are online as we speak.
She actually said those words.
Those words, Senator?
You actually invoked the nightmare of political
assassination.
You actually invoked the specter of an
inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of
triumph, for himself and a battered nation
yearning to breathe free, silenced forever.
You actually used the word "assassination" in
the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone
of racial hatred - and gender hatred - and
political hatred.
You actually used the word "assassination" in a
time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid
and terrible, that our again-troubled land and
fractured political landscape might target a
black man running for president.
Or a white man.
Or a white woman!
You actually used those words, in this America,
Senator, while running against an
African-American against whom the death threats
started the moment he declared his campaign?
You actually used those words, in this America,
Senator, while running to break your "greatest
glass ceiling" and claiming there are people who
would do anything to stop you?
You!
Senator - never mind the implications of using
the word "assassination" in any connection to
Senator Obama...
What about you?
You cannot say this!
The references, said her spokesperson, were not,
in any way, weighted.
The allusions, said Mo Uh-leathee, are,
"...historical examples of the nominating
process going well into the summer and any
reading into it beyond that would be inaccurate
and outrageous."
I'm sorry.
There is no inaccuracy.
Not for a moment does any rational person
believe Senator Clinton is actually hoping for
the worst of all political calamities.
Yet the outrage belongs, not to Senator Clinton
or her supporters, but to every other American.
Firstly, she has previously bordered on the
remarks she made today...
Then swerved back from them and the awful skid
they represented.
She said, in an off-camera interview with Time
on March 6, "Primary contests used to last a lot
longer. We all remember the great tragedy of
Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A.
My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992
until June, also in California. Having a primary
contest go through June is nothing particularly
unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go
forward over the next three to four months."
In retrospect, we failed her when we did not
call her out, for that remark, dry and only
disturbing, in a magazine's pages. But somebody
obviously warned her of the danger of that
rhetoric:
After the Indiana primary, on May 7, she told
supporters at a Washington hotel:
"Sometimes you gotta calm people down a little
bit. But if you look at successful presidential
campaigns, my husband did not get the nomination
until June of 1992. I remember tragically when
Senator Kennedy won California near the end of
that process."
And at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the same
day, she referenced it again:
"You know, I remember very well what happened in
the California primary in 1968 as, you know,
Senator Kennedy won that primary."
On March 6th she had said "assassinated."
By May 7 she had avoided it. Today... she went
back to an awful well. There is no good time to
recall the awful events of June 5th, 1968, of
Senator Bobby Kennedy, happy and alive -
perhaps, for the first time since his own
brother's death in Dallas in 1963... Galvanized
to try to lead this nation back from one of its
darkest eras... Only to fall victim to the same
surge that took that brother, and Martin Luther
King... There is no good time to recall this.
But certainly to invoke it, two weeks before the
exact 40th anniversary of the assassination, is
an insensitive and heartless thing.
And certainly to invoke it, three days after the
awful diagnosis, and heart-breaking prognosis,
for Senator Ted Kennedy, is just as insensitive,
and just as heartless. And both actions, open a
door wide into the soul of somebody who seeks
the highest office in this country, and through
that door shows something not merely troubling,
but frightening. And politically inexplicable.
What, Senator, do you suppose would happen if
you withdrew from the campaign, and Senator
Obama formally became the presumptive nominee,
and then suddenly left the scene? It doesn't
even have to be the “dark curse upon the land”
you mentioned today, Senator. Nor even an issue
of health. He could simply change his mind... Or
there could unfold that perfect-storm scandal
your people have often referenced, even
predicted. Maybe he could get a better offer
from some other, wiser, country. What happens
then, Senator? You are not allowed back into the
race? Your delegates and your support vanish?
The Democrats don't run anybody for President?
What happens, of course, is what happened when
the Democrats' vice presidential choice, Senator
Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, had to withdraw
from the ticket, in 1972 after it proved he had
not been forthcoming about previous mental
health treatments. George McGovern simply got
another vice president.
Senator, as late as the late summer of 1864 the
Republicans were talking about having a second
convention, to withdraw Abraham Lincoln's
re-nomination and choose somebody else because
until Sherman took Atlanta in September it
looked like Lincoln was going to lose to George
McClellan.
You could theoretically suspend your campaign,
Senator.
There's plenty of time and plenty of historical
precedent, Senator, in case you want to come
back in, if something bad should happen to
Senator Obama. Nothing serious, mind you.
It's just like you said, "We all remember Bobby
Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."
Since those awful words in Sioux Falls, and
after the condescending, buck-passing statement
from her spokesperson, Senator Clinton has made
something akin to an apology, without any
evident recognition of the true trauma she has
inflicted.
"I was discussing the Democratic primary
history, and in the course of that discussion
mentioned the campaigns both my husband and
Senator Kennedy waged California in June in 1992
and 1968," she said in Brandon, South Dakota. "I
was referencing those to make the point that we
have had nomination primary contests that go
into June. That's a historic fact.
"The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last
days because of Senator Kennedy. I regret that
if my referencing that moment of trauma for our
entire nation, particularly for the Kennedy
family was in any way offensive, I certainly had
no intention of that whatsoever."
"My view is that we have to look to the past and
to our leaders who have inspired us and give us
a lot to live up to and I'm honored to hold
Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States
Senate in the state of New York and have the
highest regard for the entire Kennedy family.
Thanks. Not a word about the inappropriateness
of referencing assassination.
Not a word about the inappropriateness of
implying - whether it was intended or not - that
she was hanging around waiting for somebody to
try something terrible.
Not a word about Senator Obama.
Not a word about Senator McCain.
Not: I'm sorry...
Not: I apologize...
Not: I blew it...
Not: please forgive me.
God knows, Senator, in this campaign, this
nation has had to forgive you, early and
often...
And despite your now traditional position of the
offended victim, the nation has forgiven you.
We have forgiven you your insistence that there
have been widespread calls for you to end your
campaign, when such calls had been few. We have
forgiven you your misspeaking about Martin
Luther King's relative importance to the Civil
Rights movement.
We have forgiven you your misspeaking about your
under-fire landing in Bosnia.
We have forgiven you insisting Michigan's vote
wouldn't count and then claiming those who would
not count it were Un-Democratic.
We have forgiven you pledging to not campaign in
Florida and thus disenfranchise voters there,
and then claim those who stuck to those rules
were as wrong as those who defended slavery or
denied women the vote.
We have forgiven you the photos of Osama Bin
Laden in an anti-Obama ad...
We have forgiven you fawning over the fairness
of Fox News while they were still calling you a
murderer.
We have forgiven you accepting Richard Mellon
Scaife's endorsement and then laughing as you
described his "deathbed conversion."
We have forgiven you quoting the electoral
predictions of Boss Karl Rove.
We have forgiven you the 3 a.m. Phone Call
commercial.
We have forgiven you President Clinton's
disparaging comparison of the Obama candidacy to
Jesse Jackson's.
We have forgiven you Geraldine Ferraro's
national radio interview suggesting Obama would
not still be in the race had he been a white
man.
We have forgiven you the dozen changing metrics
and the endless self-contradictions of your
insistence that your nomination is
mathematically probable rather than a
statistical impossibility.
We have forgiven you your declaration of some
primary states as counting and some as not.
We have forgiven you exploiting Jeremiah Wright
in front of the editorial board of the
lunatic-fringe Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
We have forgiven you exploiting William Ayers in
front of the debate on ABC.
We have forgiven you for boasting of your
"support among working, hard-working Americans,
white Americans"...
We have even forgiven you repeatedly praising
Senator McCain at Senator Obama's expense, and
your own expense, and the Democratic ticket's
expense.
But Senator, we cannot forgive you this.
"You know, 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."
We cannot forgive you this -- not because it is
crass and low and unfeeling and brutal.
This is unforgivable, because this nation's
deepest shame, its most enduring horror, its
most terrifying legacy, is political
assassination.
Lincoln.
Garfield.
McKinley.
Kennedy.
Martin Luther King.
Robert Kennedy.
And, but for the grace of the universe or the
luck of the draw, Reagan, Ford, Truman, Nixon,
Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts, even George
Wallace.
The politics of this nation is steeped enough in
blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not
invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!
And to not appreciate, immediately - to still
not appreciate tonight - just what you have
done... is to reveal an incomprehension of the
America you seek to lead.
This, Senator, is too much.
Because a senator - a politician - a person -
who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that
she might just be sticking around in part, just
in case the other guy gets shot - has no
business being, and no capacity to be, the
President of the United States.
Good night and good luck.
© 2008 MSNBC Interactive
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