I wish her oh-so-sensitive supporters would explain how this appalling stuff just keeps on coming out of the mouth of the Junior Senator from New York

On March 31, 1968, amid growing opposition to the Vietnam War,
and with no end in sight, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced
he would not seek or accept his party's nomination for president.

I'm still trying my darnedest not to say bad things about the junior senator from New York (JSFNY), or to impugn the wisdom of her supporters, without whose votes there is an alarming possibility that the unspeakable McCranky could be elected president -- assuming that this year we're going to revert to the old custom of actually electing a president.

And I feel duly abashed every time the supporters of the JSFNY complain that her enemies (who are, you know, everywhere) always assume the worst about her while assuming the best about, well, apparently everyone else on the planet. Even though my own observations are that this is backwards, that the JSFNY always imputes the most sinister (as well as implausible) motives to all those enemies all around her, while expecting, no demanding a free ride from the stuff that comes out of the mouths of her supporters and herself. And even though the old cries of sexism now ring hollow. Far from being penalized for her gender, the JSFNY now seems to brandish it as a Get Out of Jail Free card -- it excuses every fool thing that comes out of the mouths of the mouths of those supporters and herself.

I hadn't planned to jump into the controversy about the JSFNY's latest gaffe. Okay, it may not be the latest. I could be a gaffe or several behind. I mean the one where, claiming precedent for the continued non-resolution of the Democratic presidential nomination as we head into June, she dragged up 1992, when her husband in fact had the nomination substantially wrapped up by June, and of all years 1968, when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy waited till June to be murdered.

Once again those of us who are staggered by the tastelessness and ignorance of the reference are accused of always imputing the worst motives to the JSFNY. I've tried to come at this from every angle I can think of, and the very best explanation I can come up with is:

She just opens her mouth, and, you know, stuff comes out.

Forget the appalling suggestion that she's waiting to see if Senator Obama is perhaps assassinated too, although I don't see how it's possible to invoke the 1968 race without thinking about it.

Let's even give the JSFNY a pass on her dismissal or sheer ignorance of the expanded electoral calendar, as the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson pointed out in his column today (begun with the ominous question, "If this campaign goes on much longer, what will be left of Hillary Clinton?"):

She cites two election years, 1968 and 1992, as evidence -- but neither is relevant to 2008 because the campaign calendar has been changed.

In 1968, the Democratic race kicked off with the New Hampshire primary on March 12; when Robert Kennedy was killed, the campaign was not quite three months old. In 1992, the first contest was the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 10; by the beginning of June, candidates had been battling for about 3 1/2 months -- and it was clear that Bill Clinton would be the nominee, though he hadn't technically wrapped it up.

This year, the Iowa caucuses were held on Jan. 3, the earliest date ever. Other states scrambled to move their contests up in the calendar as well. When June arrives, the candidates will have been slogging through primaries and caucuses for five full months -- a good deal longer than in those earlier campaign cycles.

No, forget all of that. Just think about the election cycle she's dredged up. 1968.

The election cycle in which a Democratic president, four years after being elected in a historic landslide, but now unwilling to face the futility of the catastrophically wasteful, destructive, and pointless as well as increasingly unpopular war he insisted on continuing to wage, was forced to abandon his hope of being reelected, and when the Democratic Party was so hopelessly split by the war that the unspeakable Republican candidate, one Richard M. Nixon, slithered his way into the White House.

I don't think that's what the JSFNY was thinking of. The trouble is, I can no longer even hazard a guess as to what she might be thinking of.

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