The politics of provocation: Clinton, Obama and the American media

It was not unusual, she said, for nomination fights to extend into the month of June. My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? she said, adding, We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.

The substance of Clintons argumentthat there is ample precedent for contesting a nomination well into the summerwas not helped by the two examples that she chose. Bill Clinton became the presumptive nominee of the Democrats in 1992 no later than April, when he won the New York primary. In 1968, primaries and caucuses played much less of a role and the nomination eventually went to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who did not compete in a single one.

Clinton avoided, for obvious reasons, the example which more closely tracks the current contest: the 1980 challenge by Senator Edward Kennedy to the renomination of President Jimmy Carter, which was bitterly fought until the eve of the Democratic convention in August, and ended with a deeply divided party losing the general election to the Republican Ronald Reagan.