Splicetoday

Politics & Media
May 27, 2008, 01:39PM

Specter Of Assassination Shows Clinton's Time Is Up

Hillary Clinton's convoluted reasoning for staying in the Democratic race took a disturbing turn recently when she cited Robert Kennedy's 1968 assassination. Black Americans are already worried about the vulnerability of Barack Obama's high profile candidacy, and this paper says that by inflaming those fears Clinton has gone too far.

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"On Friday, the former first lady met with a South Dakota newspaper’s editorial board in advance of that state’s primary next week. When asked why she thought certain segments of the party were calling for her to withdraw from the race, Clinton responded that it just didn’t make sense to her, noting that previous Democratic nomination contests have continued deep into the summer months.

This is an established fact. The 1980 nomination battle between President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Edward Kennedy and the 1984 race between Vice President Walter Mondale and Sen. Gary Hart were contested all the way to the Democratic National Conventions of those respective years.

Yet Clinton did not reference these examples. Instead, the junior senator from New York spoke the unspeakable, raising the specter of one of the darkest moments in American political history: the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968.

We are quickly approaching the 40th anniversary of RFK’s assassination. And in many ways, this year’s presidential campaign shares a great deal in common with its 1968 counterpart. Then, as now, the nation faced grave uncertainty, was embroiled in a tragic and unnecessary war and was intensely divided. Likewise, then, as now, there was a candidate who inspired a movement for change, as millions of Americans dared to hope for a future untainted by war, greed and corruption. That vision for change was snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet. We pray that this year’s campaign renders a different result.

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Discussion
  • this is just one in a continuous series of death knells that started in january for the clinton campaign. forget about it, she's done for.

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  • I think that Clinton has gone off the deep end. Make that both Clintons.

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  • This piece is somewhat overwrought and exaggerated. First, 2008 doesn't compare to 1968: sure, the country's divided politically like 40 years ago, but there's no draft, no riots in cities and no assassinations. Second, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, in '80 and '84, had their nominations wrapped up by convention-time. In '68, had RFK lived, it's questionable whether he'd have won against Hubert Humphrey, who had the establishment's backing. Of course Hillary and Bill Clinton are sleazy pols out for themselves. That's not news. And Obama, who can afford to be magnanimous, was correct in letting her off the hook (with reporters recording his words) by saying Clinton's invocation of RFK was the result of fatigue. She's cooked--thankfully--and I hope she'll fade into the bowels of the Senate once defeated.

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