Oh, boy:

Key quote: “you know, 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.”

Right after she says that, there’s a pause, where she seems to be thinking. I have got to believe that right there she has realized that she’s made a huge mistake, and quickly concludes that she should move on, act like nothing happened, and hope that nobody notices–a politician’s instinct. If it becomes a big thing, then it does, but don’t make it so yourself. Once it came out of her mouth, it would have been nearly impossible to take it back.

A bit later, she “apologized” (saying no more than that “it was not intentional” is not a real apology), but she of course did not even come close to hitting the main point of what was wrong with what she said.

Let’s face it: when you’re giving reasons as to why you should stay in the race against a candidate who has all but technically clinched the nomination, but even more so someone like Obama, who has been under threat of assassination so long that he was given secret service protection seven months before the primaries started–well, you don’t list as one reason that presidential candidates have been assassinated in June.

There is no doubt in my mind that Clinton did not mean that she’s waiting to see whether Obama gets gunned down, much less that she hopes such a thing will happen. It is simply the fact that what she said was so incredibly inappropriate, so vastly, jarringly wrong–well, she could hardly have not known immediately that she had misspoken. Who knows why she said it–I am guessing that this kind of talk goes on in her private campaign meetings to rationalize staying in the race, and maybe Clinton simply let it slip while in a comfortable, closed discussion, forgetting for a split second that she was being filmed.

This has to be an end for Clinton, if not to her campaign, then to many of the hopes she may have been holding on to. Yes, she has gall enough for any thousand people, but to make this remark and still expect to force her way into the VP spot? While not a “Dean Scream,” it is close enough.

Not to mention, she was wrong in her logic, in several ways. As usual, she botched the metrics misleadingly in her favor. Sure, in 1992 the race lasted until June–that’s because the primaries started more than a month later, and more significantly, several big states, including California, Ohio, and New Jersey, didn’t vote until June 2.

Also, June 1992 may have been when Clinton technically crossed the finish line, but it’s not when he tied up the nomination–that happened on March 17th, when he won Illinois. By March 20th, Harkin, Tsongas and Kerrey had all dropped out of the race, and only Jerry Brown stayed in, despite being behind 991 to 143. Clinton had clinched it; the race was over in all but the technical sense.

And though Hillary denies the idea that math should play a role, Ron Brown, working for seen as backing the Clinton campaign in 1992, used the math argument in March to suggest that the lone challenger, then Jerry Brown, should pull out:

“It certainly brings it much closer to a conclusion,” said Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic national chairman. “You could argue that it’s theoretically possible for Jerry Brown to mount a come-from-behind challenge, but the math and the reality of Bill Clinton’s momentum certainly work against him.”

In fact, Democrats praised Tsongas–the real challenger to Clinton then–for doing “what needed to be done”–namely, pulling out of the race in March:

Many Democrats, including many committed to Mr. Clinton, took pains today to praise Mr. Tsongas, who entered the race almost a year ago, when Mr. Bush was near 90 percent in the public opinion polls and when the silence on the Democratic Presidential front was deafening.

“When other people looked at the polls, Paul Tsongas looked at what needed to be done for the country,” Mr. Angelides said.

Apparently, Hillary is not looking at what needs to be done for the country. She’s only looking at what needs to be done for herself.

Add to that the fact that a key Clinton Superdelegate, Dennis Cardoza, has just flipped from Clinton to Obama–and there are rumors that Cardoza leads a group of 40 Clinton delegates (not all supers) who were already prepared to jump the fence and had planned to slowly migrate into Obama’s camp.

Today’s gaffe by Hillary should make it quite a bit easier for delegates to make public their decision. Hopefully. Hillary really ought to quit while she’s–well, not ahead, but as ahead as she’s going to ever get from now on.