A reader hopes:
I'm a Democrat, an Obama supporter who would gladly have pulled the lever for Clinton if she had won the nomination (which she did not). And until this afternoon, I even would have accepted her as Obama's veep. But after that idiotic statement about Bobby Kennedy, no more. I say that not because the statement is offensive (which it is), but because it is so monumentally tone deaf.
If she was trying to bolster her own case, she failed miserably. If she was trying to live up to every negative image that you or other Hilary-adversaries could gin up in your most hallucinatory fever dreams, well, mission accomplished. And I for one am tired of Dem presidential candidates who seem most skilled at rhetorically shooting themselves in the foot. Hopefully this gaffe will continue the rolling of superdelegates away from her camp, and end this parade of ignominy.
For the record, I think she meant it as a reference that people would remember about a June primary. She's not crazy enough to air wishes about Obama's early demise. But her actual point is nonetheless fallacious because a) that 1968 primary campaign did not last six months as this one has; b) Johnson's withdrawal scrambled the race in ways not applicable today. And 1992 doesn't help her case either. In short: wrong, dumb and unintentionally offensive, especially to already alienated African-Americans and to a Kennedy family still reeling from Ted's illness.