The "A" Word

by Pa Rock
Opinionator

Hillary Clinton is old. She is older than me and she has led a very full life. And she is tired. It should come as no surprise to anyone, therefore, when she suddenly jams both feet in her mouth as she did yesterday in Sioux Falls. She's old, and she's tired, and she has been relentlessly beating a dead horse for a very long time.

Obama supporters share a common fear. It isn't a fear that he will lose the nomination and slip quietly back into the Senate never to be heard from again. Even if he didn't already have the nomination locked up, which he does, he has brought hope back into the election system and presented us with real and meaningful challenges. He has inspired legions of young people to enter the process with the promise that their participation can mean something great for America and for the world. He has shown them that America can be a much better place, and that she can once again become a beacon of inspiration for the rest of the world. Barack Obama will continue to inspire regardless of his job title.

The fear that Obama supporters share is that he will be killed, that his dream, and ours, will be cut short by an angry fool with a gun.

I watched in near terror last Tuesday night as this young man and his beautiful wife weaved their way through a large and boisterous crowd in Des Moines just as night was falling. People were pressing in from all directions, and the two secret service agents who were in sight would have had a very hard time doing anything to stop somebody from rushing forward with a gun. It was terrifying. "Move," I thought. "Move, move, move!"

Hillary, while prattling on incessantly about sexism, has become the poster girl for the disaffected racist whites. Exit polling in Kentucky showed that two of ten Clinton voters said that they would never vote for Obama because of his race. If two of ten had the cahones to say it out loud, what was the actual percentage? Last week she highlighted her new constituency by making a statement about her supporters being "hard working Americans, white Americans." (Unfortunately for her, McCain will capture the cracker vote in November.)

But what was she thinking yesterday? Why did she think it necessary after stating that Big Bill hadn't sewn up the Democratic nomination in 1992 until the California primary in June, to add as a post script that Bobby Kennedy had not been assassinated until June? Has the wiring between her brain and her mouth been severed?

Hillary and her minions have often said and implied that anything can happen - a la Reverend Wright - that could put her back in contention. But to float an implication that her opponent could be assassinated is well beyond the pale of proper political conduct, at least in America!

I hope that wasn't what she was implying. I hope that she wasn't sending some sort of signal to the crazies that it is time to take matters into their own hands. I truly hope that it was fatigue and old age that allowed that awful word to slip out of her mouth an onto America.

And then to frost the cake, Hillary's apology (of sorts) was lame and ineffectual, and did not even express the courtesy of addressing Barack Obama directly. Poor form, indeed.

Hillary, it is time to pack it in. You are old and you are tired - and you are becoming mentally incontinent or very, very mean!