CSI Hillary RFK Gaffe

Emptywheel, over on Firedoglake, has a most interesting post today, a breakdown on how the "scoop" of Hillary Clinton's RFK Gaffe came to be.

No, not the classic, reporter-rushing-into-city-room, all breathless, and then an explosion of reporters flooding the scene, all yelling "Get me rewrite!".

No, not even any shoe-leather was applied.

In fact, as Emptywheel notes, the reporters covering Hillary that day were completely out-of-the-loop, as was the ground-zero, Argus Leader;

So: the NY Post to Drudge to the editors to the reporters actually "traveling" with Hillary ...

Whether or not it was Aravosis or Drudge who decided this comment had to be a story (nice company, Aravosis), it was, at last according to both Aravosis' account, some random guy reading the news who did so--he told them they might have a big scoop. And, ultimately, it was a newspaper reporter watching the live feed of an interview from someplace comfortable who first reported the comments--it was neither the press corp reporters who were traveling "with" Hillary nor editors of the Argus-Leader with whom Hillary was meeting.

The Politico is pouring out its' heart, bemoaning that the scoop wasn't a SCOOP ...

Go read Emptywheel's "A Return to Zapruder in the Live-Stream World", it's a good one ...


Meanwhile ...

Hillary is spending time on the reverse treadmill, wearing belt, with digging tools hanging from it, so she can shovel her way out of this incredible faux paus.

In an article in the New York Daily News, with the headline of "Hillary: Why I continue to run", Hillary is all Mea culpa city, to a certain extent, and back on her soapbox, spinning her unique brand of electoral math, and, of course, gaffe aside, she's still the best candidate out there;

I am running because I still believe I can win on the merits. Because, with our economy in crisis, our nation at war, the stakes have never been higher - and the need for real leadership has never been greater - and I believe I can provide that leadership.

Finally, I am running because I believe I'm the strongest candidate to stand toe-to-toe with Sen. McCain. Delegate math might be complicated - but electoral math is not. Our campaign is winning the popular vote - and we've been winning the swing states we need to get 270 electoral votes and take back the White House: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arkansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Florida and West Virginia.

Little Hillary, er, we mean Georgie Stephanopoulous, to the rescue!

And running interference for her, to make sure she has a clear path, gaffe behind her, completely forgotten, was Little Hillary, er, we mean Georgie Stephanopoulous.

While the bigger news coming out of This Week, With George Stephanopoulos was his interview with Turd Blossom, Karl Rove, and Rove stammering and babbling a non-denial denial of his involvement in the Siegalman Case, Little Hillary, er, I mean Georgie, jumped all over Obama Campaign Manager David Axelrod, regarding Hillary's RFK gaffe.

Little Hillary, er, I mean Georgie, pressed, virtually badgering Axelrod, seeking a commitment that the Obama Campaign wasn't going to bash Hillary over her RFK gaffe, repeating himself, repeated asking if the Obama people sent out Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Hillary's RFK gaffe.

It was embarrassing ... Little Hillary, er, I mean Georgie, seemingly was uninterested in any other campaign news, other then getting Axelrod to say they would leave Hillary alone.

This ABC News post doesn't do justice to the mugging, not even mentioning, other then the show title, Little Hillary, er, we mean Georgie.


And, in the Sour Grapes Department today ...

The Former President;

"Clinton also spoke against bullying superdelegates to make up their minds, saying, "I cant believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out. 'Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.'"

"She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence," Clinton said. "And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running. Her only position was, "Look, if I lose I'll be a good team player. We will all try to win but let's let everybody vote and count every vote.'"

Well, they got a lesson on running a primary campaign, so I suppose, they'll need some extra instruction on losing, with a little class.

Roughly two-weeks left ... If we are lucky ...


Bonus Links

Boy, And We Thought Russert and Williams Sucked

She Was The One She Was Waiting For!

"Oh ... THAT Conspiracy ..."

Three "Must Reads" From Al Giordano

She Was The One She Was Waiting For!

It occurred to me, after our post last evening ("Back, and to the Left ... Back, and to the Left") the implosion of Hillary Clinton, the incredible irony of it all.

By her own, twisted, dark, logic/strategy, in context to her decision to stay in the primary race (a race she has been losing since Super Tuesday, and, just this past week, it became all-but-officially lost), related to waiting around for "something to happen" to/with Barack Obama, she reached into that rather large Clintonean Bag of Tricks, and brought up the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

As it has played out, universal condemnation has followed, and, to borrow from the Obama Campaign;

She Was The One She Was Waiting For!

How incredibly ironic ...

Amazing self-destruction, from the person who was, self-admitted, ready on Day One...

The shoddy, lazy, error-filled campaign Hillary conducted will be buried, a number of paragraphs down, when the history of this primary season is written.

We already posted the "Nixon In A Pantsuit" thing, so, if, in time, she does recover, it will be written as a "Nixonian" rise back into the game.

If Hillary was looking to take off the front pages her screaming banshee, "Give Me Michigan and Florida, or Give Me Death", well, she sure achieved that goal.

If Hillary was looking to prime the Rules Committee, before the meeting next week, whipping her supporters into a frenzy ... Err, not very likely she achieved that one (though, we can't rule out that she will use this self-inflicted wound to beat the "Everyone's picking on me" drum - again).

No, in a big-bowed basket of irony, Hillary, inserting foot firmly in mouth, ended up to be the "something happening", and "the reason to wait around".

She Was The One She Was Waiting For !


From the territory and borders around Hillaryland

Karen Timulty, of Time Magazine points out that this has been a pattern of Hillary's, going back to March;

TIME: Can you envision a point at which--if the race stays this close--Democratic Party elders would step in and say, "This is now hurting the party and whoever will be the nominee in the fall"?

CLINTON: No, I really can't. I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.

Trex has an option for you;

Well, we could talk about how Hillary is now openly incorporating the possibility of an assassin’s bullet into her plans for this whole nomination deal until our heads explode.

Or we could watch this adorable video of a hedgehog eating a carrot.

From The Mahablog;

Clinton supporters are whining that people are picking on poor Hillary again, making a Big Deal out of an innocent remark. These are the same people who won’t let go of Obama’s “bitter” remark, which some argue was taken out of context. I say live by the gotcha, die (metaphorically speaking) by the gotcha.

Quoting the Rude One: “To Clinton’s campaign and its supporters, who have been holding out for some gaffe by Obama that would take him down: How’s that working out for ya?”

Andrew Sullivan;

She's been waiting for Obama to implode. Instead, she just has.

The Anonymous Liberal;

Hillary is very smart and has pretty good political instincts. She'd no doubt run a competent general election campaign. But I think Obama has demonstrated during this grueling one and half year primary campaign that he is every bit her equal when it comes to raw political skill, and his campaign has out-smarted and out-maneuvered hers at every step. When you combine that with Obama's far superior rhetorical gifts and fundraising potential, it's hard to see why people still think Clinton would be the more formidable general election candidate.

Oliver Willis;

Seriously, who says this sort of thing? Your average person doesn’t say it, let alone somebody running for president. Hillary Clinton didn’t lose this race because she was a victim of sexism. She lost this race because people are tired of her clawing for power and running over everything to do it.

Three "Must Reads" From Al Giordano

This, actually, is a rewrite of something I put together yesterday morning.

The rewrite necessary after Hillary's magnificent, tremendous, gigantic gaffe.

When I awoke on Friday AM, the blogosphere was tsunami-flooded with stories and posts about "Hillary as VP" and "Camps Talking" (you can look Here, Here and Here for a sampling).

I read a bevy of these, the regular big-and-small blogs, the MSM articles and not a one referenced the scoop that Al Giordano had published - on Thursday;

“The Nightmare Ticket Is Dead”

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

So now, when the Clinton surrogates continue to advocate that Obama choose Senator Clinton as veep, everybody will know: It’s Bill, and not Hill, stoking the fire. When New York political insider Mark Green’s Air America sent an email blast this morning to its entire mailing list featuring the milquetoast, boring and Arbitron-ratings neglected Thom Hartmann’s plea - “Obama: Ask Hillary First” (and this Air America subscriber summarily unsubscribed from that list this morning upon receiving that piece of corporate-paid advertising), everybody knows: the ventriloquist behind these Muppets is Bill Clinton.

A lot of people took a lot of sips from the Clinton Kool-Aid, pushing and hawking this "dream ticket"

Not Al, as you can see.

Now, it is my speculation, that, even before the Hillary foot-in-mouth RFK gaffe, it was the absolute longest of possibilities that Barack Obama would select Hillary as his running mate.

Really, we're talking here the "If Barack and Hillary were the only two people left on earth, he would still pause and think very hard and long on it" kind of chances.

I have to imagine, if Hillary's name was on some kind of list in the Obama camp, long or short, there's a line running through it this morning, and, after the next print-out of it, the name "Hillary" will not even appear on it.

And the news gets grimmer for Camp Clinton.

“The Cardoza 40″: Exodus of Clinton Delegates Begins"

The Field has learned that Cardoza is the first of a group of at least 40 Clinton delegates, many of them from California, that through talking among themselves came to a joint decision that all of them would vote for Obama at the convention. They have informed Senator Clinton that it’s time to unite around Obama, and that they will be coming out, one or two at a time, and announcing their switch between now and the convention if Senator Clinton doesn’t do the same.

Ouch!

There's a breach in the dike and, on top of not winning new delegates, she's losing the one's she already had!

Finally, for a breakdown of the Superdelegates, check out Al's "Undeclared Superdelegates: The Gang of 165 (+ 32 in Limbo)"

All of the Cardoza 40 should, now, just come over to Obama, en masse.

There's no need for subtlety, no need to position it.

It's over.

"Back, and to the Left ... Back, and to the Left ..."

One flew east, one flew west
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Well we wrote it, a while back ...

Hillary Clinton is smelling burning rubber!

We had a running inside joke, a former girlfriend and I, that whenever someone said something impossibly outlandish, way off the charts, something totally crazy, we would ask them if they could smell burning rubber, the acrid odor being the tell-tale signal of their complete dementia.

Christ, from her antics the past few days, she's got a mountain of Goodyears' wafting up her nostrils.

Just on Wednesday, she did a Randle Patrick McMurphy (okay, granted, she is far more in the mold of Nurse Ratched), citing nearly every conflict known to man, short of the Hatfields-and-McCoys, to beat her Michigan and Florida drum.

And she follows that up with this, today;

"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.

Say What!?

She should stay in the race, that she is losing, and will lose, because, in June, as Donny "Snowflakes" Rumsfeld would say, "stuff happens"?

Like, who knows, some one might assassinate Barack Obama?

Needless to say, the WWW and Blogosphere is afire with this with this.

And, Keith Olbermann did a Special Comment on this, just a short time ago.

Oh, yeah, they pushed Hillary out in front of the cameras to offer an apology;

"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. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever," the former first lady said.

"I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns of both my husband and Senator (Robert) Kennedy waged in California in June in 1992 and 1968 and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June. That's a historic fact," she said.

"The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy," she added, referring to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's recent diagnosis of a brain tumor. "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. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.

"My view is that we have to look to the past to our leaders who have inspired us, give us a lot to live up to, and I'm honored to hold Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the Kennedy family," she said.

Aside from the hardcore Clintonistas, the most generous would say, as I believe Hillary attempted to upchuck in her non-apology-apology, was that she was making a "time-reference", citing how past primary races extended into June (and, let's face it, a politician of Hillary's level, having been through two Presidential campaigns, knows that, in the past, that was largely attributable to California's primary was in early June, and that's where the pot-o-gold-load of delegates sat).

That may be ... I know, whenever someone asks me the time of day, and it's 12:30PM, I always add on to it "that was the time JFK was shot".

"Back, and to the Left ... Back, and to the Left ..."

Right? ... Just something you automatically go to?

For whatever reason she said it - a warning, or wishful thinking, or a just-the-facts statement for a historical campaign reference - it was a GIGANTIC GAFFE! ...

HUGE! ...

FAUX PAS DELUXE! ...

If this isn't a reason for the Superdelegates to declare earlier than expected, I don't know what more they need.

This wasn't mumbled, with sleep in her eyes, at 3AM.

Nor, did she shout it, franticly running across a tarmac, avoiding sniper fire.

This was stated by Hillary in an interview with the Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, SD), their editorial board, where judging by the video, it was during daylight hours, and no sound of gunfire from snipers in the background.

Here's the video of it;

Here's What Does RFK's Assassination Have to Do with It?

Superdelegates, do your job ... Now, please!

Do not subject us to two-more-weeks (maybe longer, if Hillary aims on burning down Denver), of this inane, out-of-control, power-hungry, win-at-all-costs, Clinton Campaign.

End the suspense now and let these last two-weeks be the mop-up of what's left, if anything, of the Clinton Legacy.

Do it before she, perhaps at here next campaign stop, remarks about that town's theatre, and reminds the voters, pointing out their great, old downtown theatre, and that's the reason she's still running ...

Because, we all remember, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a theatre...


Bonus Burning Rubber Hillary Links

Wonkette: Our Greatest American Draws The Line

Oliver Willis: Hillary Clinton Says She’s Staying In Because Someone Could Assassinate Obama Like RFK

Barry Crimmins: Abraham, Martin and Clod

Ana Marie Cox: See, I Told You She Wasn't Interested in Veep (UPDATES)

Marc Ambinder: Get Ready, Get Set.... Parse!

John Cole: Like Three Little Fonzies