Yes, it's come down to this. Hillary Clinton suggests, elliptically at the very least, that she's staying the presidential race in case Barack Obama is assassinated:
"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
This makes about as much sense as butterscotch scallops. If she really is trying to convince us that she's staying in in case Obama is assassinated that's nuts -- if he were assassinated she'd be the nominee almost certainly, whether she'd dropped out or not. And if that's not what she meant, why mention Kennedy's assassination at all?
But really, this is just another example of throwing as much nonsense at the wall as possible and seeing what sticks. In order to stay in the race, Clinton needs to do whatever she can to hide the basic fact that there's virtually no way for her to win now. So distractions, like reminding voters that unexpected things like assassinations happen, are key. In this case, she went way way too far, but this is just an example of a continuing pattern of campaign through, to use a term coined by Josh Marshall, projectile nonsense.
The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, is insisting that she just meant that the nomination wasn't wrapped up early in 1968, but give that that campaign went on well past June it's hard to see why she brought up the assassination. Was it just a poorly thought out commment? Probably, but she should apologize and explain that more fully...
--Sam Boyd
