As to Democracy Lover's specific comment, "Hillary needs to bow out NOW. Not next week, not after May 31 - NOW! The woman is a menace.", I could not disagree more. How is she a menace? Because she continues to run for the Presidential nomination? Because she has every word parsed with a hermeneutic based on a suspicion that she is nefarious and calculating? She is engaging in democracy, not some theoretical "Thing", but the real nuts and bolts of democracy, advocating for her own qualifications for the office of President. The Democratic Party is pretty evenly split between her and Sen. Obama - whom I support should one not notice the big banner at the top of the right column - and is doing everything any other candidate would do to secure that nomination.
It is one thing for those on the right to vilify Mrs. Clinton, to take every single phrase she utters and make it malevolent. It is quite another for Democrats to so do (although I quite understand left-wing disdain for both Clintons on a policy level). Olbermann's commentary is absurd on its face, and adds fuel to the already-raging anti-Clinton hysteria. Mrs. Clinton was no more discussing the possibility that Sen. Obama might be murdered than she was discussing the weather in California in June. She was referencing the fact that there has been, in living memory, hotly contested Democratic primaries as late as June. Robert Kennedy's win in California set up an interesting situation, had he not been murdered that night. His final words to his supporters was to go on to Chicago and a win there. He, like Sen. Clinton, had a mathematical chance to wrest the nomination from Humphrey. With RFK's death, the nomination was clearly Humphrey's. That's it, and that's all.
I see no reason for Mrs. Clinton to exit the race. I also do not see her as a menace. The only menace is the constant barrage of nonsense tossed at her by people who should know better. The cult of the offhand comment has reached absurd depths.
For the sake of all that's good and true and holy, please stop.
UPDATE: Eli at Fire Dog Lake takes up this same topic, and writes:
I really, really want to take Hillary at face value and not believe that she was actually using the prospect of an opponent's assassination to score political points - hell, maybe the possibility of Obama getting shot simply didn't occur to her (it's certainly not on my mind very often). But even if her intentions were pure, it was still an incredibly careless and stupid thing to say, and now the media and the right-wing crazies like Malkin have a new Democratic outrage to wring their hands about. Not only that, but now that the idea is "out there," they all get to breathlessly speculate about the chances that maybe something could happen to Obama. And won't that be fun.
First of all, it's only out there because people like Oliver Willis, BradRocket, and Eli will not take her at face value, or understand what seems pretty clear from the entire discussion as seen in context. As for offering a rationale for murdering Barack Obama - I honestly cannot get that from this quote, no matter how you parse it, unless you believe all the worst of the unbelievable crap from the right during the 1990's about the Clintons. Lamenting that the right now has another cudgel with which to beat Democrats is a non sequitur, since they often have such tools ready at hand, making them up out of thin air, just as this one is. What is feeding this entire thing is the on-going faux-outrage from Obama supporters and others, not the delusions of the already delusional Michelle Malkin.
