Why WAS the RFK assassination repeatedly invoked?

[marylanddem]

Another poster has raised this question & I think it needs to be raised again and again. Why in hell would she repeatedly mention RFK's assassination unless she really were hoping something would happen to Obama? I am so sick of her apologists & so sick of her bullshit about primaries lasting through June. We have to look this one head on and realize the woman is a freaking vulture waiting for something to happen.

[Swamp Rat]

1. Part of the campaign script left over from Mark Penn?

Hillary's campaign staff forgot to edit the copy she used the other day? :shrug:

[grantcart]

9. actually you have to say that in a way they have gotten worse since he lost

control of the message.

[Swamp Rat]

13. Well, she did revert back to the early March version, which employed the word "assassination"

It was an enormous mistake no matter how you slice it. No wonder her supporters are scrambling to urge everyone to move past it. And I also understand why Obama and RFKjr would want to move past it. Unfortunately for Hillary, this story has legs, and will likely go though next week's news cycle, if she is lucky. I have a feeling she will end her campaign very soon. It would be a career-saving move.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

2. Was it actually repeatedly invoked? Or was it actually invoked twice?

'Cause twice is what I'm coming up with. :shrug:

Look. That's bad enough, really it is. No need to stretch it beyond what's real.

[marylanddem]

4. Twice IS repeatedly.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

8. Okay. Fine. Whatever.

Then be sure you don't say it was used three of four times. Okay?

Like I said. The reality is bad enough w/o going all sensational.

[keep_it_real]

18. And now the media has blasted the idea for some wacko to pick up on

This ain't good

[Genevieve]

19. I think four.

Fout times.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

21. No. It was two times she used the assassination reference

The other two were references to his being in the race in June.

She used the assassination reference the first time (March 6th I think) and yesterday.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

32. And she alluded to it on other occasions...

without actually "going there." It does appear to be a scripted line that she used in March, dropped in April and May, then returned to last week. This is not a "slip of the tongue" as her apologists would have you believe.

A key part of her strategy (and now the only part) is to hang in there long enough for the Obama Campaign to implode -- or some thing else.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

33. Exactly right it was alluded to w/o actually being said after March 6th

I honestly don't think she intended to say it again last week. She screwed up and reverted back to the original script.

I agree that they've been waiting for Obama to get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy or whatever the equivalent of such would be. It's become the only chance they have of winning this. What I don't get, and never will, is why they've insisted on keeping the campaign active. I'm not saying it wasn't their right, just that I don't understand they why of it. If they had suspended their campaign and Obama's campaign imploded they could always have just reactivated their campaign. It would have saved money and much of the media's claims of a divide among Democrats.

[WeDidIt]

3. IT was directed at the Super Delegates

The imagery of a popular young Demcoratic poltiician for change being assassinated was purposefully injected into the debate for the sake of the super delegates.

The outrage over her use of the imagery furthers her aims.

Her talking poijnts behind closed doors to the super now are very simplistic, "See, this country cannot take another political assassination and you just know that Barack is a sitting duck."

[havocmom]

16. Yes. for the SDs. There are few delegates up for grabs in MT, SD, PR

so it was not about June primaries at all.

[ellacott]

5. This was coming from her camp as far back as January

Having the race last until June was not even a subject for discussion. I think she never got called on it so she continued to use it.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/civilrights/

[anigbrowl]

6. ________ you can xerox (fill in the blank)

[K Gardner]

11. Fear

[TBF]

7. If she is just talking about campaigns going into the summer she could've used other

examples. I could see where she would pragmatically make the argument behind closed doors to supers that something like this could happen. But why say it to a reporter? That is the part I can't understand.

[K Gardner]

10. I don't think they were "hoping". I think they were trying to remind people "something could". To

instill fear.

[Johnny__Motown]

12. Perfect Image for her.... Political Vulture hoping to feed on a campaign corpse that ISN'T DIEING

[Poll_Blind]

14. You won't have to wait long. Editorial cartoonists are burning the midnight oil on this one. n/t

PB

[havocmom]

15. McAuliffe has hit on the subject A LOT lately too. It's been a Talking Point

and possibly a sick strategy, but at this point, outta $$, outta time and outta voters, the got nuttin else.

Shows they have no limits, no boundaries, no legitimacy.

[keep_it_real]

17. To create a climate in which some wacko thinks it's ok to do the evil deed?

And be a hero of the white race? Just speculating.

[Writer]

20. My question is why wasn't it a big deal until now?

[ClassWarrior]

22. One word. Video.

Creepy words are always creepier when you can hear and see them coming out of the perpetrator's own mouth.

NGU.

[Celebration]

23. I wonder

But I think it was because she is on videotape this time really. I have wondered about all their statements saying "*Anything* (the unthinkable) can happen."

I think it has been building up. Plus, everyone is wondering why she still IS in the race now, more than before.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

24. If she didn't get negative feedback the first time she use the assassination reference

Then why did she change the way she worded it after March 6th until yesterday?

You know...if we're just tossing questions out.

[kenny blankenship]

25. Repetition is the soul of advertising. If you want a message to sink in, you repeat it

Yes, she's said it before, and here at DU, WE HEARD HER THE FIRST TIME.
Now with her repetition, the world outside of DU has finally noticed it, too.

And a few things have changed since her first mention of it, that help to explain why this time is different and why people are reacting strongly.

1) It's now very late in the game and she's lost. (Or if you prefer -it sure looks like she's lost) She's also showing herself to be a very sore loser. Pundits speak openly and plainly about her pursuing a spoiling strategy out of revenge. Inappropriate references to one's opponent maybe getting assassinated just SOUND DIFFERENT coming from a failed candidate who's not taking defeat well. The world took notice this time.

2) The last Kennedy brother's health has taken a very bad turn. People are reacting to the news as if he's already passed on. The feelings of all Democrats towards the Kennedy family are extraordinarily sensitive right now. Crass remarks about Robert Kennedy's assassination as a historical precedent for "game changing" events in primary contests ARE GOING TO GRATE ON RAW NERVES. The world noticed her this time.

3) Hillary Clinton has been openly fishing for votes in some strange waters lately. Her surrogates--Ferraro, Davis, McAuliffe-- are now fixtures on FOX News. She gives an interview with Bill O'Fascist. Hubby goes on the Limbaugh show. Limbaugh appeals to listeners to vote for Hillary. Patrick Buchanan embraces her as the last best hope for white people. She actually begins to tout Karl Rove as a supportive ally. These are places where Democrats don't go and audiences they generally refrain from soliciting. Hillary sweeps the hills of Kentucky and W. Virginia and touts her connection to lower class whites there and around the country as something Obama will just never share for obvious reasons. Voters there confide to reporters' microphones and cameras that they'll never vote for a black man and tell pollsters they'll vote for McCain instead. Hillary doesn't dissociate herself from these plainspoken racists. Political people talk openly of her pursuing racially bigoted votes and using them against the Democratic Party as a crowbar to pry the nomination away from Obama. Then, once again, in justifying her continued campaigning she alludes to the possibility that Barack Obama could, you know, meet with an untimely end let's say, sometime before the nominating Convention. She's said something nearly identical to this before, but with the recent history of the race becoming more overtly racial, it just sounds different this time, it sticks out; and on the third stroke the world finally NOTICES her talking about the assassination of her opponent as a reason she could still win this thing - always a taboo in politics.

People can conclude different things about Hillary and her true intentions, but there's no escaping the fact the world RECEIVED that message from her, and drew its breath back in horror. The world did not leap to the conclusion that there was something awful in her remarks, it was pushed there by her repetition of them in an increasingly ugly contest with sharpening racial overtones.

[marylanddem]

26. very well said. Thank you.

[marions ghost]

31. yes

"the world received that message from her" There's no way to spin it positively. Arguments that she was just stating historical facts are lame. Thanks for putting it in a bigger context. That's how it should be seen, as part of a very dubious overall strategy.

HRC was using rehearsed talking points. Maybe she was told "don't use the word assassinate," but her brain backfired and she accidentally did it anyway. When playing with fire you can get burned.

This is such bad form for a seasoned politician at this point that you wonder if she's gone batty.

[Barack_America]

27. dog whistle to superdelegates. issued when she needed them to pause.

problem was this time huckabee had made his own off-color remark about obama and teddy is sick.

my view in 3 sentences.

thank you.

[apocalypsehow]

28. Dog-whistling to the Hate Vote. n/t.

[defendandprotect]

29. HRC seemed to be searching for a way to tell us what a martyr she's been in this campaign . ..

and how under attack she has been --- which she found not understandable -- she didn't know why.

And asking her why she wasn't leaving the campaign was simply translated by her as more abuse ...

HRC had no reasons for staying in the campaign other than to tell the truth . . . i.e., that she

was a "vulture" waiting for some misstep by her fellow candidate --- and possibly even some

misfortune.

So she went even so far as to mention "assassination" ---

Unfortunately, we all understood quite well what was on her sick little mind ---

Drop out, Hillary --- go away --- !!!

[Elspeth]

30. Maybe because the 40th anniversary of that assassination is coming up next month

and people who remember it still have feelings about it.

[suston96]

34. Uh, maybe, just maybe, it was to show how unpredictable political campaigns can be.....

...and why no one "drops out" of a campaign until the nominee is actually selected by the convention.

Take the trouble to read how that 1968 nomination actually turned out and how the eventual nominee never even won a single state primary.