Analyzing Clinton’s off-key remark

By DEVLIN BARRETT

The reference to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination drew ire.

NEW YORK — Long hours, hard work and scant hope of succeeding may be the cause of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest case of political tone-deafness.

For all her talents, the former first lady does not seem to be able to match her husband’s track record of near-perfect political pitch, as many have observed. She has sounded more than one jarring note during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Whatever the cause, Clinton’s reference Friday to the June 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as she attempted to explain her reasons for remaining in the race struck some who heard it as a veiled reference to rival Barack Obama.

Plenty of voters, black and white, worry that Obama faces extra risks to his safety as the first black candidate to have a realistic possibility of being elected president. Even the vaguest suggestion that threats to Obama’s safety are a reason for Clinton to continue her candidacy against overwhelming odds was bound to rile the New York senator’s critics.

Certainly that’s the way Obama’s campaign initially appeared to interpret her remark to a South Dakota newspaper, the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls.

On Saturday while campaigning in Puerto Rico, Obama seemed inclined to excuse Clinton’s remark as a simple misstep.

“I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make and I think that is what happened here. Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it and I will take her at her word on that,” Obama told Radio Isla Puerto Rico.

Except for Clinton, Obama was the first presidential candidate to receive Secret Service protection in the 2008 race. That happened in May 2007, which was the earliest such security measures ever been taken for a candidate. Clinton has had continued Secret Service protection since she left the White House.

In her interview with the newspaper, Clinton mentioned the assassination when asked why some were calling for her to end her campaign in the face of ever-dwindling odds.

The woman who holds the New York Senate seat once held by Kennedy said she didn’t understand why, given the history of primaries, some Democrats were calling for her to quit.

“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. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

In fury unleashed by her remark, Clinton said she regretted any offense she might have caused.

She got an important vote of support from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said he had heard her make similar statements in the past.

His father, the front-runner for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, had just delivered a victory speech in the California primary when he was gunned down while making his way out of a Los Angeles hotel.

Yet the assassination reference wasn’t Clinton’s only mistake. In the same breath, she maintained that her husband had not wrapped up the nomination until June. In truth, he did so in March with the Illinois primary.

Now, the longer the nomination race goes on, the more people are asking Clinton why she continues to campaign.