I said what?

Photo from World Economic Forum

People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa.

(…)

I find it curious. Because it is unprecedented in history. I don’t understand it. Between my opponent and his camp and some in the media there has been this urgency to end this. And historically, that makes no sense. So I find it a bit of a mystery.

(…)

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. There’s lots of speculation about why it is.

So, what on earth did Hillary mean by that??? I can only think of three interpretations:

1) Her official version, that she was using RFK’s assassination as a chronological reference point, because it was a memorable event that took place during a meaningful June primary – illustrating the point that June primaries have historically been meaningful. I can understand that, up to a point, because my memory works much the same way, but I’m amazed that she would make such a terrible choice. If meaningful June primaries are such a historical commonplace, surely she could come up with a better, less tragic example?

Also, as Keith Olbermann points out in his furious Special Comment, not only has she referenced RFK’s assassination before, but there is evidence that she was warned away from it — or at the very least, that she knows how to talk about the June ’68 primaries without mentioning it.

2) She was signaling primary voters and superdelegates to pick her because she’s less likely to get shot. I wish I could completely rule this out, but I can’t. She’s too smart and too competent to make a gaffe like this more than once, if ever.

The best argument against this interpretation is that it’s far too late in the game to do her much good, and she’s too smart and too competent not to know that the backlash would be ugly and huge. The second-best argument is that she was not speaking to a large audience, trying to get a message out, but instead talking to a newspaper editorial board, explaining her thought process about staying in the race.

3) She was revealing her "vice-nominee" strategy of hanging around to ensure that she would be Obama’s replacement if, God forbid, something happened to him. If you elide the conversation to "Why are you still in the race?" "Because RFK got shot," I guess I can see how someone could reach that conclusion, but it’s absurd.

Firstly, the strategy makes no sense. Who exactly is Hillary trying to stay ahead of as the emergency backup nominee? What marginal benefit does she obtain by staying in (and incurring massive debt) instead of dropping out? Secondly, even if this were her strategy, there is no way in hell that she would ever admit to something so ghoulish.

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.

UPDATE: Cinnamonape in the comments points to this Jake Tapper post which questions the validity of Clinton’s comparison to the ’68 and ’92 primaries, and also points out that extended Democratic primaries do not generally translate to electoral success.