Hillary is staying in the race in case her opponent is assassinated?

From the Times’ version of the story that is everywhere:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defended staying in the Democratic nominating contest on Friday by pointing out that her husband had not wrapped up the nomination until June 1992, adding, “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Her remarks were met with quick criticism from the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, and within hours of making them Mrs. Clinton expressed regret, saying, “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy,” referring to the recent diagnosis of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s brain tumor. She added, “And I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive.”

No apology to the Obamas, as Olbermann and others have pointed out.

Calculating and contemptible (which was my first reaction, and which I’ve edited and elaborated since), or merely outrageously, regrettably clumsy?  I have a hard time believing it was a mistake.  She is a professional politician who knows exactly what she is saying (and, as the AP version points out, it’s not the first time she’s made this “historical observation”).  If she was indeed simply trying to make a historical observation, and has “been around” as long as she says, she knows she could have chosen other Democratic contestants who ran longer than RFK and were not assassinated (as this otherwise forgiving blogger/columnist points out).  Was she letting slip that she intends to stick around long enough to see if something catastrophic happens to Obama?  Was she trying to cement those fears and doubts in voters’ heads - fears that are already very much on their minds?  Her explanation, that because of Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer diagnosis the Kennedy family has been on her mind, would have been a lot more plausible had she not - as noted above - invoked this very same “historical observation” in March.

As reprehensibly as she has been campaigning, she long ago forfeited the benefit of the doubt.

Hillary plots her revenge

For a fleeting moment last week, I thought I detected her tone softening - as if perhaps she was paving the way for a more graceful exit.  But no.  After sweeping the ”hard-working… white American” voters of WV last week and KY yesterday, she found a new low road to travel: comparing the DNC punishment of the Florida and Michigan primaries (and Sen. Obama’s agreement with those rules - rules she once agreed to, also) to the GOP’s theft of the 2000 election.  How does that work?  Florida and Michigan broke primary rules and forfeited their delegates.  HRC had no problem with those rules until it became clear that she desperately needed the delegates.  Now, FL and MI aren’t being punished for breaking the rules, they’re being “disenfranchised.”  And her efforts to have them seated, well, those efforts are just as brave as the efforts of the suffragists and abolitionists!

But wait!  There’s more!

“If we fail to do so, I worry that we will pay not only a moral cost, but a political cost as well,” she said. “We know the road to a Democratic White House runs right through Florida and Michigan. If we care about winning those states in November, we need to count your votes now. If Democrats send a message that we don’t fully value your votes, we know Sen. McCain and the Republicans will be more than happy to have them. The Republicans will make a simple and compelling argument: why should Florida and Michigan voters trust the Democratic Party to look out for you when they won’t even listen to you.”

As “Desperado” observes, that sounds rather like she’s telling her supporters to vote for John McCain if she loses this fight, doesn’t it?

Public Service Announcement

…courtesy of the May 2008 “Prevention” magazine (page 150):

The Worst Place For Your Toothbrush: ON THE BATHROOM SINK

There’s nothing wrong with the sink itself - but it’s awfully chummy with the toilet. There are 3.2 million microbes per square inch in the average toilet bowl, according to germ expert Church Gerba, PhD, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona. When you flush, aerosolized toilet funk is propelled as far as 6 feet, settling on the flor, the sink, and your toothbrush. ‘Unless you like rinsing with toilet water, keep your toothbrush behind closed doors - in the medicine cabinet or a nearby cupboard,’ Gerba says.

“Aerosolized toilet funk”…

I simply couldn’t rest without warning you all.

OK, there’s so much more to blog - and I will! Probably even this weekend, when I’m supposed to be writing a term paper. The semester is wrapping up, and things will liven around here, I promise!

National Day of (Conservative Evangelical Christian) Prayer

A bill signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 makes the first Thursday in May a National Day of Prayer.  Prayer coordinators for the event have to sign a statement that reads in part:

“I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God.”

As you might imagine, Jews and Muslims have some issues with this.  Kudos to Interfaith Alliance and Jews on First for their call for a National Inclusive Day of Prayer.

Expect good things

A friend of mine has embraced this mantra: “Expect good things.”  Instead of spinning and fretting over worst-case scenarios, she sets her mind on best possible outcomes, and “expects” them.  Where I come from, a deep Midwestern pool of pathologically practical Lutheran genes, we have a rather different mantra: “Hope for the best, expect the worst.”

It’s kind of how I’m approaching the election these days.  Here we are - in a recession, an energy crisis, a healthcare crisis, a military quagmire (today is the fifth anniversary of the “end” of major combat operations in Iraq), beholden to a president and a Republican party with some of the lowest favorable ratings in modern history - and the Democrats have somehow gone from a “sure thing” to a statistical tie with John McCain, a man who promises not to change a thing in his administration’s management of Bush’s war, and to continue the Bush economic policies that are working so well for us all.

To whom do we owe our thanks?  To an inexperienced Obama campaign that may have gotten a little complacent and cocksure - just as Clinton was getting desperate enough to launch her “kitchen sink” strategy (the apparent success of which goes to show you really can’t underestimate the critical thinking skills of an electorate)?  To the emergence of a really ugly side of Bill Clinton?  To Obama’s failure to finish off the Rev. Wright controversy weeks before Wright finally forced him to, allowing Clinton reverse her slide and begin, as Josh Marshall put it, “controlling the agenda”?  So many choices!

And yet the silver lining here may be that, despite the media-magnetizing idiocy that is the Democratic Primary, McCain is not sailing ahead.  As Marshall observes, he’s still on a honeymoon, with no opponent and a distracted press.  The “mainstream” media hasn’t even begun to comment on his inconsistencies on Iraq, his campaign finance cheating, the rich irony of his criticizing Obama’s “elitism” as he flies around the country on his heiress wife’s corporate jet, and yet he’s only managing to stay even with Clinton and Obama in the polls.  Once there is a genuine contest underway, who knows?

Expect good things.