Was Senator Clinton expressing an assassination wish for Senator Obama this afternoon? Not consciously, I don’t think. The argument is that she was thinking in terms of time line — nomination campaigns often are still being fought in June. That probably is what she was thinking. But there are a lot of other, and more recent, examples she could have used that didn’t involve death.

Even without the assassination reference, evoking 1968 is dishonest, because the nomination process happened on a later schedule in those days. For example, the New Hampshire primary was in March instead of January then.

Even if she didn’t mean anything by it, evoking assassination showed terrible judgment, and I understand it’s not the first time she has mentioned the Robert Kennedy assassination to explain why she won’t quit. Of all people, she should know the world is full of loony tunes who take it upon themselves to act out such suggestions.

For that reason I have a long-standing policy of deleting comments that express a wish for someone to be assassinated, even if the commenter is joking, and even if the potential target is someone I don’t like.

Clinton supporters are whining that people are picking on poor Hillary again, making a Big Deal out of an innocent remark. These are the same people who won’t let go of Obama’s “bitter” remark, which some argue was taken out of context. I say live by the gotcha, die (metaphorically speaking) by the gotcha.

Quoting the Rude One: “To Clinton’s campaign and its supporters, who have been holding out for some gaffe by Obama that would take him down: How’s that working out for ya?”

Senator Clinton has since issued a kind of non-apology apology, in which she sort of expresses regret to the Kennedy family but not to Senator Obama. She still doesn’t seem to grasp what it was she said.

The new argument is that Senator Clinton needs to stay in the nomination race because someone might assassinate Senator Obama.

She’ll deny that’s what she meant, but the implication seems pretty damn clear.

Al Giordano writes for The Field —

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

And that is all that anybody needs to know to understand the childish and wounded behavior of Senator Clinton yesterday, grandstanding hypocritically to senior citizens in Florida, telling them they should consider themselves under sniper fire in Bosnia, er, Zimbabwe, aggrandizing herself as some kind of civil rights leader (MLK? or LBJ? She didn’t say this time) and attempting to corner 30 members of the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee that will meet on May 31 to resolve the disputes over whether, and, if so, how, delegates from Michigan and Florida might be seated at the convention in August.

If it’s true that Obama has ruled out Clinton as veep, this is great news, for reasons I gave in the last post.

Earlier today, RJ Eskow wrote,

Hillary’s rhetoric of the past 24 hours has gone from conciliatory to cataclysmic, turning on a high-speed dime like some UFO over the Florida swamps. An awful lot of Democrats are shocked and outraged at her use of civil rights rhetoric over the primary dispute, especially after winning two primaries with the help of some white voters who admitted their choice was influenced by race.

Some are suggesting a personality shift explains the change of tone, but she’s cooler and smarter than that. It’s more likely that this sudden transformation is premeditated, brought on by a simpler and more ruthless motive: She’s demonstrating to Obama and the superdelegates what she’s capable of doing if she’s crossed.

Think about it: She’s showing that she is willing to ignite a firestorm, amplify the misguided rage of her supporters, and split the party in two if her demands are not met. She no longer expects to get the nomination. She has another list of demands, which might include the vice presidency but definitely involve high-level appointments for herself and/or her supporters. She spent a couple of days showing how good she can be for the party. Now, the purpose of her recent comments has been to show how much damage she can do.

I’d call it a “hissy fit,” but I’d be accused of being sexist. I agree with Arianna — it’s time for the superdelegates to step in and put an end to this nonsense before Senator Clinton does any more damage.

Also, here’s a video with clues about why Obama didn’t bother to campaign in Kentucky.

I’ve not tried this species of video clip before. If it doesn’t play, Lisa has it and the transcript as well.

Whatever data this chart about yesterday’s Kentucky primary voters is trying to present isn’t clear to me, so I’m going by the interpretations in the comments. But apparently about 14 percent of those who cast votes in Kentucky for Clinton yesterday plan to vote for McCain in November.

Put another way, 16% of yesterday’s Kentucky primary voters said they’d vote for McCain in November. Of those, 55% went to Hillary and 28% went to Obama.

A commenter:

One useful thing from MSNBC’s exit polling: of yer white Kentucky Democrats earning under $50k p.a., about 37% voted for Bush over Kerry, and 30ish% voted for Bush over Gore.

So the 34% who said they’d vote for McCain over Obama really are just the same people who, while registered as Democrats, almost always vote for a Republican president.

Another commenter:

It’s also interesting that Obama did better, percentagewise, amongst white Independents than white Democrats. Unsurprisingly, amongst whites who said race was important to their voting decision, 88% went to Clinton. People who voted for Clinton tended to believe that Obama shares the views of Wright; the converse is true as well. Both sides will be dissatisfied if the other candidate wins the nomination, but Clinton has 53% of the voters who don’t like *either* candidate (Obama has 13%).

So, basically, Clinton did well amongst voters who prefer McCain, voters who don’t like either Democratic candidate, and whites who voted significantly based on Obama’s being black. That’s a hell of an electoral coalition right there. I assume we’ll be hearing McAuliffe tout it real soon now.

Michael Tomasky:

The folks on television, for the most part, were a little too obsessed with Kentucky. They had air time to fill, so it’s understandable, but the fact of the matter is that Kentucky is irrelevant for November. So is West Virginia. They’re not battleground states. Battleground states are places where the two Americas, red and blue America, meet and fight for dominance. Ohio, obviously; Pennsylvania, sure; many Midwestern states, several Rocky Mountain states, two or possibly three southern states, arguably Oregon and Washington. But Appalachian states are not in conflict. They’re red. Lots of pundits don’t understand this yet. It wouldn’t matter if Obama lost Kentucky by 80 points.

There was much hand-wringing on television last night over why Obama did little campaigning in West Virginia and Kentucky. My guess is they decided that pouring millions of dollars into those states probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome all that much. Save the money for the general election.

Tomasky again:

Yes, there will come a point at which Clinton continuing to fight will look increasingly ridiculous. But even so, the Obama campaign and the media and maybe even the Democratic National Committee will say, “Look, he’s got 2,026; he’s won.” But the Clinton camp will say, as it has been saying, something like, “We don’t regard 2,026 as a real number. We say 2,209 is the number. And he’s not there yet. And we’re ahead in the popular vote, if you count Outer Freedonia and Inner Seutonia, as any rational person would. So we’re ahead. And we challenge Senator Obama to say otherwise.”

What happens then? Do the networks and cable channels literally stop inviting Clinton people on their air, because they’re just making fools of themselves? Of course they don’t. They want ratings, and conflict means ratings. And people willing to make fools of themselves on television definitely means ratings! Do the newspapers weigh in with haughty editorials saying, enough already? Sure they do. But does Clinton care about that? So what? What’s a newspaper editorial? Maybe if The New York Times actually withdraws its endorsement. But as long as she’s not directly attacking Obama, that seems a reach. Jokes by Leno and Letterman? She’ll just go on there, read a Top 10 list. All will be forgiven. Ratings.

Even if she’s not attacking Obama directly, I think she’s undermining his general election chances in other ways. By means subtle and not-so-subtle, Clinton is picking up the Appalachian vote by providing positive reinforcement to the worst impulses of the one demographic she can still call her own — white working-class non-urban voters who live in states in which the African American population is above 6 percent but below 17 percent of the total. (See David Sirota’s Race Chasm Theory.)

That little slice of Americana is giving her primary wins in states that will almost certainly go for McCain in November, no matter who the Democrats run. But by appealing to those voters she’s cultivating the negative talking points the GOP is already picking up to use against Obama — that he’s an “elitist,” for example.

The big “blue” states that Clinton won, like California, she won early, while she was still Ms. Inevitability. If the California or Massachusetts primary were held today, would the results be the same? I doubt it.

Sasha Abramsky:

As I wrote last week, the Democratic party’s presidential primary race is, to all intents and purposes, over. Obama’s going to be the nominee. Yesterday, voters in Kentucky gave Clinton another big victory – but at this point these victories are pyrrhic. They don’t help Clinton, but they do push the toxic issue of race ever more to the fore, which is a shame given Bill Clinton won the presidency, at least in part, because of his tremendous appeal to African American voters. Clinton might argue she hasn’t stoked this, but the argument’s a stretch. She’s explicitly said she is the candidate of “hardworking Americans, white Americans”. To win the southern states with the smallest African American populations, she has crafted a message of “electability” that is vaguely coded language for “I’m white”. It’s a shameful denouement to a largely honourable, and at least generally progressive, career.

And it’s all an act. She’s no more “one of them” than she’s a carrot.

So, here’s what I’d like to see coming out of Oregon. Sometime in the next couple weeks, the Clintons will have to bow to the inevitable. They need to find a graceful exit strategy and then set to work for the Obama candidacy. Both Clintons have shown their power to sway southern white voters. Now it’s time for them to put their political capital to good work. If the Clintons genuinely care about their progressive legacy, they’ll tackle the race genie head on. It’s out in the open now – if it wasn’t before, certainly it is after the polling in West Virginia and Kentucky. It’s one thing for Hillary Clinton to play dirty to win primary votes; it’s another thing if she doesn’t try to repair the moral damage after the primaries are over.

Clinton has pandered to the conservative Appalachian vision of America for weeks now. It’s time for her to recognise the country will be a healthier place if the message sent out by Oregon’s colour-neutral electorate proves more durable than that sent out by Kentucky’s voters. This isn’t about who wins more delegates; it’s about how those delegates are won and at what moral cost.

In Clinton Land, only sexism counts. Last night on MSNBC someone from the Clinton campaign was being interviewed on MSNBC, and she was going on about how Barack Obama needs to speak out about sexism, and the interviewer — might have been Tweety — asked if Clinton was going to speak out about racism. And the Clinton campaigner sputtered and shuffled and clearly was caught off guard by the question.

The difference between the two campaigns, IMO, is that while there is all kinds of blatant sexism and racism out there –some of which is being expressed by partisans on both sides –I don’t see the Obama campaign cultivating sexism to win votes. I do, however, see the Clinton campaign cultivating racism (and one hell of a victim complex) to win votes.

Let’s be clear. The Dems cannot win in November without a strong turnout by African Americans. I think they can, however, win without the “white working-class non-urban voters who live in states in which the African American population is above 6 percent but below 17 percent of the total” vote. That’s why Kentucky is irrelevant.

And the Clinton campaign already looks ridiculous to everyone but her die-hard supporters. She’s become a caricature. For those of us who defended her for years against the ravings of the Right, this is terribly sad.

I tried to watch a bit of the primary coverage tonight, but I got tired of hearing the bobbleheads talk about Obama’s problem with white working-class voters. No one ever mentions Clinton’s problem with college educated voters, or city-dwelling voters, or black voters.

Sadly, the only relief to this tedium is commentary on Senator Kennedy’s brain tumor.

They’re saying Obama has won the majority of elected delegates, and the only way Clinton can win is to persuade the superdelegates to overrule the voters. She keeps saying voters must be heard from before the race is over, but ultimately she doesn’t care how they actually, you know, vote. Unless it’s for her.

Wake me up when it’s over.

According to Patrick Healy of the New York Times, “racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor” in yesterday’s West Virginia primary. Do tell.

I’m not going to link to it, but if you want to check out the latest by Armando, he’s still ranting about the problem Senator Obama has with white working-class voters and how nobody wants to talk about it (although seems to me everyone is talking about it) and that this problem must be “addressed,” but of course Armando himself doesn’t address it (see Kyle Moore).

Before I go any further, I want to explain once again that I am from a small mining town in white working-class southern Missouri , so please don’t call be an East Coast elitist for what I’m about to say: For the record, I don’t think racism is the only factor causing older, poorer and less educated whites to prefer Clinton. I suspect the “less educated” part is at least as salient. These are, after all, the same people who through the years have voted against their own best interests time and time again because they are so easily manipulated by the Right. Just tell them that if Democratic Candidate X is elected the Democrats will take away their Bibles, and you can count on them to vote Republican.

In spite of yesterday’s blowout, I agree with Michael Tomasky that it’s unlikely West Virginia would go for the Democratic nominee in November, even if that nominee is Hillary Clinton.

Clinton people are positing West Virginia as a “swing state” of just the sort that Democrats have to win. But in truth, West Virginia isn’t much of a swing state at all. It’s basically a Republican state now at the presidential level. It’s remotely possible that if Obama (assuming he’s the nominee) chooses exactly the right vice-presidential nominee, and campaigns in just the right way, he could carry the state. But only remotely. The truth is that West Virginia quit being a swing state in 2004, or possibly even 2000. Even if Clinton is the nominee, if her people are counting on West Virginia’s five electoral votes, they’re barking up a tree that doesn’t have many branches they can hold onto.

And this – the fact that most Democrats expect to lose West Virginia in November – governs national Democrats’ emotional response to Clinton’s win tonight. The Obama people figure that they can hit 270 – the number of electoral votes they’ll need to capture the White House – without West Virginia.

Clinton supporters point out that no Democrat has won the White House without West Virginia since 1916. Tomasky says that 1916 isn’t relevant now.

That was the beginning of the union era in America. We are now in the twilight, at best, of that era – at least until a Democratic president changes that equation. But for now, Obama can win the White House without West Virginia. Clinton could, too, if she somehow became the nominee. She’d have to. But the emotional factor works against her tonight. Most Democrats just don’t expect that they can paint West Virginia blue.

Matt Yglesias writes, tongue in cheek,

What’s even more interesting is that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim.

One of the reasons I support Obama is that he has the potential of putting together a whole new Democratic/progressive coalition that will entirely change the old voting patterns that, increasingly, work against the Dems. Senator Clinton continues to run a 20th-century campaign based on 20th-century assumptions, which is one of the reasons she’s losing.

Steve Benen writes,

For that matter, I’m not sure if the swing-state argument is the most compelling one for the Clinton team. Even if we designate West Virginia as a swing state (it’s a dubious proposition in light of Bush’s 13-point victory there four years ago), Obama seems to have just as strong a swing-state case to make, if not more so — he’s won Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The Obama campaign points out that, overall, Obama’s support among white voters is comparable to that of Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. That is to say, the white vote hasn’t been helping the Dems all that much for a while. Democrats really do need the African American vote, however, which Clinton is unlikely to get. I’m not sure if Armando has addressed that problem, however.

[Update: Now I see that Armando is smearing me by misrepresenting my point in the post below. He’s done that before, and not just to me. It’s a long-standing pattern. The boy can’t stand being disagreed with. Anyway, for any TalkLeft fans who drop by here, my point was not that it is “silly” to discuss Obama’s failure to connect with white working class voters. My point is that comparing data from the Virginia and North Carolina primary results without taking other factors into account is disingenuous. I’m sure Mahablog regulars understood that, as they can read.]

Oliver Willis sheds light on the dreadful weakness in Barack Obama’s candidacy that others lack the guts to discuss: Obama gets too many votes.

Brilliant snark, that.

Today many people are comparing Hillary Clinton’s campaign to the scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail in which the Black Knight wants to keep fighting after his arms and legs are cut off. I think the analogy fits some of Clinton’s followers even more tightly than it does Clinton herself.

Pro-Clinton bloggers obsessively continue to look for chinks in Obama’s armor. One compares the North Carolina results with the Virginia primary of three months ago and notes, in classic concern troll fashion, that Obama has “lost support.” Why that might be is a complete mystery to the blogger, but the inference is that Obama is just plain running out of steam. Demographic and socio-economic differences between the two states,* plus the effects of Clinton’s ugly “kitchen sink” campaign, are not considered.

[*For example, 31.7 percent of Virginians have college degrees, while 23.4 percent of North Carolinians have college degrees. Obama tends to do better among college-educated voters.]

Apparently we’re supposed to believe that the politician who lost both states in a rout would be a better general election candidate than the politician who, you know, actually won.

In fact, the politician herself is making the same argument (via Pam):

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Yes, and I think we see what it is.

Greg Sargent writes,

On the Hillary conference call, Hillary chief strategist Geoff Garin made the case for her electability in some of the most explicitly race-based terms I’ve heard yet.

Garin argued that the North Carolina contest, which Obama won by 14 points, represented “progress” for Hillary because she did better among white voters there than she did in Virginia.

Translation: Obama may get more votes, but we get better votes (wink, nudge).

Armando wrote a bitterly whining post about “the problem” he thinks no one wants to talk about — “Barack Obama has trouble connecting with white working class voters.” He does, but I think that’s been talked about quite a bit. I believe I even addressed it awhile back. Then Armando says,

Discussing that concern is a mortal sin according to the Left blogs. I for one will not play the ostrich. I will consider the problem and ways Obama can solve it.

And that would have been fine, but in fact Armando does not “consider” the problem or ways Obama could solve it. He just whines.

Kyle Moore:

Armando failed to actually discuss ways of solving it, or, for that matter, do anything besides complain about the perceived taboo of talking about Obama’s failure to appeal to White Voters, thus murdering the one saving grace of his post.

I hope Armando is ready to admit to the Clinton campaign’s colossal failure to appeal to black voters, which would be a more critical problem for a Democrat. As Steve M documents, Dems have been losing the white, male working class vote for a long time. For example:

According to CNN’s 1996 exit poll, Bill Clinton lost the white vote (Dole 46%, Clinton 43%, Perot 9%). He lost the white male vote by an even larger margin (Dole 49%, Clinton 38%, Perot 11%). And he lost gun owners badly (Dole 51%, Clinton 38%, Perot 10%). However, Clinton won the popular vote overall 49%-41%-8%, and he won 70% of the electoral votes.

Do the Clintonistas seriously think their candidate would do better with white, less educated, working-class men than John McCain will do in November? Or that Dems can win in November without the enthusiastic support of African Americans?

And the fact is that Obama has won some states that are nearly all white, such as Wisconsin. David Sirota talks about the “race chasm.”

Recall the Race Chasm graph that I published in In These Times a few weeks back. It shows how Hillary Clinton has been winning states whose populations are above 7 percent and below 17 percent black. If Democrats nominate a candidate who isn’t well supported by the black community, and that community ends up not turning out to vote in the general election in strong numbers, those states in the Race Chasm like New Jersey and Pennsylvania could flip to the Republicans, and other states in the Race Chasm like Ohio, Florida, Missouri and Virginia could remain in the Republican column (NOTE: I’m in no way saying that Clinton cannot eventually rebuild her support among black voters in a general election, just like I don’t believe Obama cannot strengthen his white support in a general election – all I’m saying is that Clinton’s current weakness among black voters is at least as important a factor in this election as Obama’s current weakness among some white demographics).

Put another way, the black vote – though only 12 percent of the total popular vote – can make the key difference in the key swing states, meaning Clyburn is absolutely right: It is not only subtly racist to generally downplay the importance of the black vote, but it is also mathematically absurd, because the black vote will likely be a decisive factor in the general election.

Call it the problem the Clintonistas don’t want to talk about.