What lousy timing for Hillary to make her comments...

Most Obama supporters are keenly aware of the real sacrifice the Obama family is making in this campaign. The death threats, the secret service presence, the constant realization that there are racist nutcases out there that resent his campaign. We pray for his safety, we watch with concern as he speaks before thousands and tens of thousands.

Hillary has continued to run after the math has been near impossible. Her surrogates have argued for the legitimacy of illegitimate primaries. Her surrogates keep saying "anything" can happen. And although she has the perfect right to keep running--as lot of us wonder why. And wonder what the "anything" is in their little minds.

Then amidst all of this fear, frustration and pent up anxiety--West Virginia and Kentucky go against the flow and reject Obama to the point where many of us think it has to be race. Hillary and her surrogates make her "white working class" comments over and over again. The constant allusions from the Clintons that Obama cannot win--you are left to fill in the blank why. Huckabee makes his failed "joke" at the NRA of all places. That picture of Obama in the cross-hairs of a gunsight appears in a southern publication. All of this in a brief period of a week or two.

And then after all this Hillary steps into a gaffe, whereby she fills in the blank for one of the "anythings" that could possibly happen. whether she misspoke or made a freudian slip the timing was bad. Then she makes it worse and issues a unapologetic apology that exhibits no understanding or acknowledgment--of why her comments might be sparks that could set off a powder keg in large segments of the population.

My apologies to the Clinton supporters, but if you asked most people what would more likely result result in a shooting--misogeny or racism, I think racism would win. Hillary's words came at a very bad time--and after all the above can be unforgivable for a lot of people.

Hillary's comments did not occur in isolation--they occured in a swamp of insinuations, political manipulations and calculations,and suspicions of her own campaign's creation. The comments were like a last minute spark into a incendiary mix. And that big picture is why so many of us "exploded" last night and are still deeply offended today.

She said in clear English yesterday that she was staying in to keep the divide in the party in the offchance that Obama is shot dead.

If she cared about this party and party unity, she could suspend her campaign with the thought that if anything DID happen, we would reach out to her.

That isn't good enough. She wants to keep the division and the drama because like cancer feeds on glucose, Clintons feed on division and drama.

There is no logic in her comment. Even giving her the benefit of the doubt (which I'm not doing), her comment makes no sense.

As a result of her comment, if something were to happen to Obama I would campaign for another candidate other than Hillary to be selected as our nominee. She's disqualified herself.

Most people who are defending Hillary are taking the comments as if in a vacuum. My point is that the environment largely influenced by her own campaigns words and actions--have made those comments more incendiary. Even if they were a simple gaffe--it is the history and surroundings that causes the explosion.

Keith Olberman tried to express it last night by listing all the stuff we've let pass from the Clinton campaign. The comment in itself is not malicious--and simply may be in her mind historical perspective--but when tossed in with the other insinuations and machinations of her campaign--they are something else.

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

1) It's now very late in the game and she's lost. She's also shown 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 of late. Her surrogates 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 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, 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 assassination of her opponent - 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 in 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.

Thank you for laying it out so clearly.

:kick: