In an interview last week in South Dakota, Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton tried to make a case for staying in the race for the nomination, even though it appears to anyone who isn’t math-challenged that her run is over and that Barack Obama will be the Democrats’ nominee.
Hillary said: “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.”
For the next 24 hours, the news cycle was dominated by analysis and outrage at Clinton’s “insensitive” remark. Was she implying that opponent Barack Obama could possibly be assassinated? In my opinion, no, she wasn’t. It was a clumsy and wrongheaded thing to say but not intended to suggest the possibility of Obama’s assassination. But clumsy and wrongheaded have become the watchwords for this ill-fated campaign.
What I find more troubling is Clinton’s hypocrisy and disengenuousness. Now she’s insisting on “counting all the votes,” which is code for counting all the votes in Michigan and Florida. Clinton and her campaign advisers were all for shutting out those two states when it appeared she wouldn’t need their votes. In fact, she signed a pledge not to campaign in either locale. Now she wants to count those votes, even though her opponent wasn’t on the ballot and many voters stayed home, assuming the election was a sham.
Meanwhile, husband Bill is out on the trail, suggesting that there’s a “cover up” regarding his wife’s campaign and that she’s being treated unfairly by the “sexist” media.
All this reminds me of the final moments of a basketball game, in which the trailing team starts fouling with a minute left to try and stop the clock, hoping the opposing team will screw up and give the game away. Except in this game, Hillary’s team is hopelessly behind, with no chance of catching up. So now they’re saying, “Let’s make the baskets 12 feet tall. And we get to count the shots we made in the pre-game warmup. Oh, and the referees are cheating us, and the sportswriters hate us.”
A leader is gracious and puts the greater good of her party and country ahead of personal gain. Hillary doesn’t look much like a leader to me. More like a sore loser.
Bruce VanWyngarden
