In yet another incident of foot in mouth disease, Senator Hillary Clinton yesterday voiced the unspoken/unthinkable fear of many by cravenly invoking the horrible memory of 1968’s assassination of Bobby Kennedy in California before a group of South Dakota news editors. Her half-hearted apology for the gaffe seemed as self-protecting and disingenuous as her explanation for previous gaffes including adding the words “as far as I know he’s Christian” when supposedly denouncing attempts on 60 Minutes to paint her opponent as Muslim and the more recent “decent, hard working white people” line used to inject race into the fight for Appalachia’s West Virginia.

The Clintons sit high atop the political survival food chain. Yet it is almost pathological the way in which they feel everything and everyone need be couched in “them against the world” terms. So are they blind or ignorant because no one can be that calculatingly stupid in their use of the spoken word? Or can they be?

Language is a very powerful tool lawyers use to plant seeds of doubt in a courtroom or in the court of public opinion. As an experienced lawyer she has always had a command of the language. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was similarly blessed, always answering an attacker in Prime Minister’s Question Time with questions at the last that could not be answered except later when the damage was long done.

Senator Clinton is not new to this arena so one has to ask; why resort to such a tactic when the nominating contest is clearly over? This kind of the calculated desperation can only hurt her, her opponent and the party. Senator Clinton had many options available to her: she remains a party leader, why not become Senate Majority leader, cabinet member, Vice Presidential candidate, even run in 2012 if Obama is unsuccessful? All of these are drying up at an alarming rate as she prolongs this fight and takes such a personal, desperate stand.

In January when I cast my own absentee vote for Barack Obama in the Super Tuesday contest, it was an agonisingly difficult choice. Today it would be simple. I respected the accomplishments of President Clinton against an opposition party, witch hunt leading Congress for 6 of 8 years. I’ve listened to speeches by her and read and studied her books/position papers and felt she would be an even better President than he. This has been a year and campaign about change and like many others, I have been excited by the prospect of such an energising and positive figure as Obama breaking through the Washington deadlocked establishment.

I’ve also had the benefit of watching the full broadcast of every debate on the Internet, read every position paper and press release over RSS/XML feeds within hours or less of them being released and indeed this story was white hot within minutes of the gaffe being recorded.

Politics by sound byte on appointment television (i.e. the 6:00 and 10:00 news casts) is dead forever. I hope we see the end of Swift-boat attack adverts this year as well. News travels at the speed of light and bloggers are on top of stories even before a candidate has arrived at their next stop. The newscycle is a never ending one.

I watched Mike Huckabee almost immediately after his NRA stage gaffe. He flatly came out and said, “I blew it, it was stupid to say, it happened in the moment, I’s very sorry” and earned a lot of respect and, most importantly the story went away. Even Hillary’s apology at the next SD stop was tinged with disbelief that this was such a big deal. It’s as if there is a fundamental Clinton DNA flaw that says saying sorry is a sign of weakness and therefore not an option.

There is no line of supporters waiting to take the airwaves to defend her. What should have been a quiet Memorial Day weekend now has enough charge for even those Sunday pundits wanting a weekend with families to rush in and watch the death-watch. No one will be surprised if, come Tuesday, this race is ended because of this.

I sincerely hope her career does not end with this as well.