Remember when Monica Seles was the number 1 ranked woman tennis player in the world? It was 1990 to 1992. She had displaced Stefi Graf, the German woman who had revolutionized the game with a much higher, faster, and more muscular level of play. Then, at a match in Hamburg, Germany, a fan of Graf's ran onto the court during a match and stabbed Monica in the back, right between the shoulder blades. Gunter Parche said he did it so that Graf, his fellow German, could become the number 1 player in the world again. Stefi Graf, indeed, became the number 1 player in the world again, just as the hit man planned. He was not sentenced to any time in prison, and was released.
Monica Seles was never the same. The damage was done.
So, today we have Hillary Clinton, hero of the uneducated white folks of Appalachia, who has been "hanging in there" in the Democratic nomination process, because "anything can happen" between now and the Democratic Convention. I've always been more than a little sceptical of exactly what this "anything" meant. In the business world, we'll flatly tell a key person that we need to know everything that they know and are doing "in case they get run over by a bus." It's both repugnant in it's frankness and frank in it's practicality. Of course, what we really want to do is decrease any individual's leverage in becoming a unique and invaluable commodity in the business. Was Hillary in fact simply maintaining her place as second in line in case Barack got run over by a bus? Or the equivalent?
Well, that's not what she would say. She would say that she's trying to convince the remaining delegates that she is the stronger candidate. Of course, her being decisively beaten in the primary process makes this a curious assertion to those of us who are fond of logic and reason. Nevertheless, one could reasonably view the primary season as not over til it's over, and so everyone is entitled to run all the way to the finish line. Personally, I occasionally run a 5K or 10K road race. But the idea of actually winning never enters my mind. I consider it a moral victory if I can finish while running the entire distance. So, in my mind, I'm happy to let candidates run the entire race, even if it seems obvious that they don't have any real chance. And so it was with Hillary, for many of us I think.
But . . . there were moments when something seemed wrong. Now, those moments seem ominous.
Perhaps looking at Hillary's exact words on why she's hanging in there will enlighten us.
"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. You know I just, I don’t understand it. "
Well, now we know that it would indeed be a bad idea for Hillary to be negotiating directly with our nation's antagonists. She is unable to control, and won't take reponsibility for, the words that come out of her mouth.
So, what exactly is Hillary thinking "can happen?" A James Earl Ray moment? Maybe she's feeling lucky?
Political Assassin of MLK
Of course, Hillary immediately clarified that she didn't mean to suggest any harm upon Obama. And she issued a statement that, "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."That's not an apology. That's a load of crap that says, "I'm sorry is you are so over-sensitive that you get upset by my plain speaking of the truth." That's insulting to the people that you just offended, it is offensive by any completely objective standard, and it blames her verbal victims for being so mentally weak as to be offended.
"If" it was offensive? Is she so obtuse that she doesn't even realize what she's talking about when she talks about the Kennedy assassinations? It's not some theoretical occurrence that happened somewhere far away. And she should be smart enough to realize that what it can lead to, in this election, is one of her nutty white supremacist supporters figuring out that he just got the signal to proceed. It has happened before and it can happen again.
There is no "if" about this. It is real. I was 3 years old when this happened. As an Irish-Catholic kid growing up in Massachusetts, Jack and Bobby Kennedy were like Gods to me. And it still makes me want to cry to think about them now, forty years after Bobby was murdered.
This is the last straw for me. She must not be on the ticket. She must not be a part of the Obama Presidency.
If anything like this happens this time, Hillary will have blood on her hands.
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