Why Krugman Is Wrong, Ctd.

My take on his dreadful column today is here, for those of you who barbecued today.

A reader adds a fascinating insight on what's really motivating a series of Clinton statements:

Clinton has indirectly denigrated three heroes of the sixties:  JFK, RFK, and MLK.

JFK and RFK also were instrumental in working for Civil Rights, and MLK was the spiritual and moral force that brought it about, but Clinton gives the lion's share of the credit to LBJ, thereby minimizing the importance of these three. Furthermore, she has reminded us on many occasions of RFK's assassination.  Why would she do that, make such a point of it?  Precisely because these three men had something Hillary Clinton doesn't have: charisma.  And today, it is the charismatic and inspirational Obama who is defeating her and she can't bear it.

These three men, like Obama, were all young (which to Clinton means inexperienced) and inspirational in ways Clinton will never be.

She is more like Johnson, plodding along, hammering away, and waiting to have her chance to show everyone that it is people like her, not people like Obama, who get things done. She is trying to neutralize Obama's charm and grace and emotional appeal. She reminds us that former leaders with that kind of appeal all ended up dead, while people like Johnson rose to accomplish things these other men did not.

I don't believe in her comment about RFKs assassination she was actually hoping for such a tragedy to occur, but she is hoping something terrible will happen - a character assassination perhaps, and that is why she stays. Unable to convince the county to choose her, like Johnson, she waits for her chance. Like Johnson, she might be willing to take the vp spot. Much of this, I believe, is in her subconscious, and slips out like it did the other day, when she is tired and particularly angry and frustrated that someone as young and inexperienced as Obama is beating her. I imagine all of her life Hillary has been seen as someone who lacked personality and charm and even sex appeal (how humiliating it must have been for her to know her husband was choosing younger and more beautiful women over her), and she knows that the only way she can succeed is to work harder than anyone else. So to plan and work and prepare all these years to finally prove she is the best, only to be shown up by a young upstart who reminds people of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. combined must be unbearable.