The XX Factor: What women really think.

More Clinton: A Guest Post from The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus

Our colleague Ruth Marcus weighs in on the RFK controversy:

Ok, I’m feeling the need to weigh in on assasin-gate and disagree with my friends Emily, Rosa and Melinda about how bad Hillary Clinton’s comments were. This is my first blog post, ever, so I hope there are extra points for a trifecta of disagreement.

Emily is right, of course, about Clinton’s bad grasp of history.  Her husband had effectively sewn up the nomination in March actually, even earlier than Emily argues.  Not only was the New Hampshire primary held on March 12 in 1968—not this year’s Jan. 8, which would make April the new June, but Bobby Kennedy only announced his candidacy  after New Hampshire.  I agree with Emily, too, about both the ugly prevalence of “gotcha” politics and the “string of offensive statements” that have come from Sen. Clinton of late. 

Also, summoning the memory of RFK’s assassination in the context of her campaign was a pretty stupid thing to say—especially given her opponent, and especially given the unfortunate timing. 

But it’s the fundamental stupidity of Clinton’s comment—when was the last time anyone named Clinton apologized so fast?—convinces me that she did not have a sinister motive or message, and that her emphasis was on when (June) not the what (assassination.)  What could she have had to gain politically by the ensuing firestorm?  The fact that she said it before—and no one much noticed—isn’t evidence to me of her evil intent (it does give the lie to the Kennedys-on-the-brain argument) as much as it is that she didn’t really understand to what extent this was an unfortunate thing to say.

To me, what this shows is that if you mix up enough exhaustion with enough self-pity (“They’re trying to elbow me out”), and there are plenty of both in the Clinton campaign these days, you end up with dumb comments like this.  And I thought John Harris made a strong argument in Politico, that this one was hyped beyond all reason.