What Hillary meant...

Melinda Henneberger is right, of course, about RFK-gate:

I agree she didn't mean to say it. But that's not the same as not meaning what she said.

It's seemed obvious to me, for a while, that Hillary's entire end-game strategy is a play at the margins, an attempt to wait around in case something even worse than Jeremiah Wright happens to Obama. Check out this two-week-old Terry McAuliffe interview on Meet the Press. I've transcribed the relevant exchange below:

McAuliffe (with a hint of malice and incredulity): Let me ask you, I know it's your show, but...you think it's impossible for Hillary Clinton to be the nominee? Impossible?

Russert (with light, melancholic dismay and a touch of condescension): Let me, uh...I'm gonna stick with the questions...

McAuliffe (holding his hands up, looking slighlty wounded): Okay, but well, I'm just saying, it's not impossible.

McAuliffe is indisputably correct. Nothing, technically speaking, is impossible. There is the uncertainty principle, first of all, and one must consider that a hamburger could actually be a ham sandwich, and, of course, Barack Obama could, at any point, be eaten by wolves.

If Hillary is sticking in the race because, as McAuliffe says, "anything can happen" then one of the most likely scenarios leading to her nomination would be Obama's assassination. It is a possibility that many in my parent's generation, along with at least one overeager New York Times reporter, have been quietly raising for months now. It's hard to believe that Clinton is oblivious to this fear, especially when she's constantly sending out surrogates to remind us just how unpredictable life can be.

None of this means that Hillary Clinton wishes Obama harm. It only means that if she continues to linger around, long after logic and good manners require her to leave, people will naturally wonder what kind of contingencies she is planning for.

A final point is worth mentioning: if Hillary did simply wish, as she has asserted, to remind voters that nominations often aren't wound up until later in the summer, wouldn't there have been be a better way to say it?

Hillary could have simply pointed out, for instance, that McCarthy and Humphrey were still battling for hearts and minds all through the summer of '68, avoiding mention of RFK's shooting altogether. Or she could have closed her argument one talking point sooner, highlighting her husband's 1992 battle through June.

Alas, there are problems with these arguments as well. First, the rifts in the '68 Democratic party led directly to the calamitous election of Richard Nixon, showing exactly why Hillary should drop out. It was the rifts in the Democratic Party, after all, that allowed this to happen. It was the Party's difficulty in uniting around a nominee that bequeathed the world a uniquely toxic Republican presidency.

Her first argument, then, would seem to be the better justification: if Bill didn't wrap it up until June, why should Barack get a pass? Only one major sticking point: it's not really true. Bill Clinton himself refutes this interpretation of the 1992 primaries deep in the bowels of his bloviating, 1008-page autobiography (as Andrew Sullivan pointed out):

On April 7, we also won in Kansas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. On April 9, Paul Tsongas announced that he would not reenter the race. The fight for the nomination was effectively over...

So yeah, Hillary didn't mean to say that she was staying in just in case Barack gets shot. But it's hard to believe that the basic thought- that Hillary would be waiting in the wings, that "anything can happen"- wasn't at the root of her comment.