Saturday, May 24, 2008

EXCUSE FOR NOT QUITTING: HEY, RFK GOT SHOT IN JUNE!


Another example of the power of the Drudge Report today, as a NY Post story pointing out that Clinton brought up the assassination of Robert F Kennedy in 1968 during an editorial board meeting sent reporters traveling with Clinton into a frenzy.

Asked by South Dakota newspaper the Argus Leader why she didn’t buy the argument that the party was fracturing because of the prolonged contest, Clinton said “my husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June.”

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” she continued. “You know i just dont understand it.”

After the Post story was circulated to the press corps via blackberry and Drudge, the reporters here at Clinton’s town hall meeting abandoned any pretense of listening to the event, flocking around the first Clinton flak they could find for a response to the quote.

After a brief off the record defense of Clinton’s comments, Campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee gave reporters what they were looking for. “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer,” he said. “Any reading into it beyond that would be inaccurate.”

The ‘reading into it’ they might be worried about is speculation that Clinton would deliberately bring up talk of assassination to raise fears that, as an African American candidate, Obama might face the same danger as Kennedy. Before his big win in Iowa, many African Americans in the South cited the danger of assassination as a reason not to support Obama.

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