Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri May 23, 2008 at 5:09 PM Pacific

The best case scenario: Untethered to reality

Another really strange aspect to Clinton's remarks today: if you accept her claim that she was merely pointing out an example of another campaign that had extended into June to show the process should continue, she was picking a really bad one.

The question she was responding to ("You don't buy the party unity argument?") came in the context of a discussion of the rationale for continuing her campaign.

In her answer, she cited Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign (falsely) and the 1968 campaign.

Even if she hadn't raised the assassination, highlighting 1968 would have been a strange way to make the point she was trying to make. At the time of RFK's death, there were three candidates with substantial delegate totals and the convention itself was a disaster. (It's also not entirely clear whether RFK would have won the nomination. Humphrey had the delegate lead.)

So if her point was that she wouldn't mind a campaign like 1968, no thanks.

(Update: Also, as KRK notes in the comments, in 1968 there were far more delegates left to be selected in states than there are today.)

I'm going to revise my earlier assessment. I still think there are two interpretations.

  1. She is a psychopath and was intentionally raising the specter of assassinations.
  2. She is completely untethered to reality, and flippantly tossed out the notion of an assassination as part of a remarkably weird (and bad) argument.

And I'm not sure that these options are mutually exclusive. In either case, she demonstrated she is not fit to be President of the United States of America -- nor is she fit to be vice president.

Update: Video Olbermann's Special Comment added to this post. (Transcript here.)

The best case scenario: Untethered to reality

Another really strange aspect to Clinton's remarks today: if you accept her claim that she was merely pointing out an example of another campaign that had extended into June to show the process should continue, she was picking a really bad one.

The question she was responding to ("You don't buy the party unity argument?") came in the context of a discussion of the rationale for continuing her campaign.

In her answer, she cited Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign (falsely) and the 1968 campaign.

Even if she hadn't raised the assassination, highlighting 1968 would have been a strange way to make the point she was trying to make. At the time of RFK's death, there were three candidates with substantial delegate totals and the convention itself was a disaster. (It's also not entirely clear whether RFK would have won the nomination. Humphrey had the delegate lead.)

So if her point was that she wouldn't mind a campaign like 1968, no thanks.

(Update: Also, as KRK notes in the comments, in 1968 there were far more delegates left to be selected in states than there are today.)

I'm going to revise my earlier assessment. I still think there are two interpretations.

  1. She is a psychopath and was intentionally raising the specter of assassinations.
  2. She is completely untethered to reality, and flippantly tossed out the notion of an assassination as part of a remarkably weird (and bad) argument.

And I'm not sure that these options are mutually exclusive. In either case, she demonstrated she is not fit to be President of the United States of America -- nor is she fit to be vice president.

Update: Video Olbermann's Special Comment added to this post. (Transcript here.)

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