Ask yourself why would a line whose meaning had to be painfully twisted to get a negative meaning cause such an uproar when it was clearly not being interpreted as intended.And create an uproar of indignation?  And two very public comments by professional commentators be interpreted as they were clearly intended and to no response but collegial laughter?

What ism is that?

Would you please remind people who are outraged by the RFK reference that RFK, Jr is not.  And that the question Hillary was dealing with was "Why do they want to push you out before the primary is over?  Why do they want you to end your campaign so early?"   She answered that others had lasted till June.   Yet how many informed talking heads have we heard, even some Hillary supporters, who think that the question was "Why are you still in the race?"  Ask the two different questions and you can see that what Hillary answered was about lasting till June.  The way the Obama supporters (and practically every media outlet went along,) reinterpreted the comment was to have it answer" Why are you still. here?  Answer: "He might get assassinated!"

Hillary could have mentioned that Ted Kennedy kept the race going till the convention when he was 976  assumed delegates behind Carter.  He fought to change a thousand delegates on the convention floor.  He received a lot of criticism for making such a challenge to a sitting President of his own party.  Hillary could make a very good case of running through August on his example, but she probably was too sensitive to his current condition to raise it.  To everybody old enough to care inn 1968, we remember the California primary night was in June, BECAUSE Robert Kennedy was assassinated that night.  A lot of primaries have extended that far in recent history, but what happened to Kennedy is WHY we remember the primary was still running in June.  When Time Magazine quoted this statement from Clinton in March, where was the outrage the same magazine pretends to have today?  How about the several other times she has mentioned it?  The difference is that this time the Obama camp told you to be outraged and showed you a different interpretation than we all had before this time.  The people on the editorial board in the room in the discussion this time did not get the Obama interpretation.  Why is that?

The same twisting interpretations have been applied by the Obama campaign and trumpeted by almost every media outlet when Hillary tried to speak about the difference s between having a President who hopes to get something done and a President with the experience to work to get it done.  To illustrate she used JFK's speech about his hope to pass a civil rights bill and LBJ's work and experience with legislation got it passed and signed into law.  Civil rights makes a good example of something very meaningful to lots of people and to Hillary.  As a teenager she saw Dr. King speak and was inspired to public service and  civil rights by his leadership.

No mention of civil rights could not begin without deference to Dr. King, so she put him in her example.  But after the Obama campaign gave its reactionary racist interpretation on her statement it became to the media and Black voters a horrendous dismissal of Dr. King and an attempt to elevate Johnson in a racially inspired call out to white people to vote against a black man. Within a week Hillary lost half of the Black vote.  It and other applications of the same ploy did irreparable damage to two people who had dedicated their lives to the service of helping others.

There is no defense against this tactic if the press decides to engage in it rather than expose it and call it out as the divisive, unethical and dishonest grab for political gain that it is.  So far you folks have helped Obama do this to Hillary, Bill, Ferraro, Johnson, Shaheen, and several others.

How often did you help your viewers see the other, more innocent and more likely to be true, interpretations of the comments by these people and how often did you decide to help Obama demonize these people by taking the most unlikely (given their histories of behavior on the subjects) interpretation that caused the most damage to Clinton's campaign and personally to her and her supporters?  

We can see that Obama is taking this approach repeatedly because of the political advantage it gives him.  It may be the thing most responsible if he becomes the nominee and the President.  You will have given him that.  You should have been giving your viewers a sound perspective on what was a much more likely interpretation of the comments and some context of other times it was said and the history of the person in context with the issues. Hillary and Bill had no context of racism or racist acts and statements, for instance, until Obama said they did.

 Did you give your viewers enough context to have them understand that Obama was doing something divisive and opportunistic that was not supportable with what we know of the Clintons?  Or did you let yourselves be manipulated into helping him try to destroy them and Hillary's candidacy.  How is it that he is continually being advantaged by disadvantaging others?  What happened to achieving on merit?

His political fortunes are boosted primarily by these media storms around his claims of lack of character in others.  Do you know how many of us out here think that shows a lack of character in Obama?  And in those who help him get away with it?

This man, in four months, has reopened painful wounds from racism and sexism that this country has spent the last fifty years trying to learn how to heal.  All of the evolving we had done, all of the work to come together as different races and genders and fight for equality of respect, opportunity and justice has been beaten and threatened by the ambitious campaign  strategy of a man who would be President on a promise of unity and hope.  And you helped.

What are you going to do to fix it?
                       #

So, mydd:
What are we going to do?  Are we going to give him the presidency for dividing us like this? Do we really want this atmosphere of reactionary gangs beating up on people and ideals we value, always making people choose sides and strike out as each other.  Always censoring remarks in case someone reactionary or Machiavellian campaigner wanted to contort the words, give them some awful meaning and them use them to gainn personal and destructive advantage?  Are we really getting what we want from this campaign of "hope, unity and a new kind of politics"?

Fortunately the recent primaries and polling continue to show that Clinton is being supported by the voters, regardless of what Obama tries and the media helps him with.  The electoral maps are showing her winning most of the potential swing states against McCain and Obama losing to McCain. She is polling well with growing support in all non-Black bloc demographic groups and AA voters continue to tell polsters that they will support Hillary in the 70% range if she is the nominee.

So far the party leaders, the media and the blogs have gotten up in arms about these twisted remarks, but the democratic general election voters are less and less inclined to seek advice from them on Hillary.

 They seem to be telling us that they feel comfortable assessing her candidacy for themselves and they seem to be looking at her as being a pretty good president who is "honest (according to the exit polls lately) and who shares my values and cares about people like me!"