How long is the Clinton campaign going to run gun ads against Obama?

--As long as it takes?

Following Sen. Barack Obama’s large win over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the May 6 North Carolina primary and Clinton’s hairline win over Obama in Indiana with help from Rush Limbaugh dittoheads, come news reports of vandalism and bomb threats at Obama offices in Indiana.

 
MSNBC reports that

 
The bomb threats were made in a call to a Terre Haute television station. Lewis Robinson of the Secret Service's Indianapolis office said the caller made threats against Obama offices in Terre Haute, Vincennes and Evansville.

 
The calls came during the Indiana primary, presumably with intent to disrupt the offices, though the Obama campaign is quoted as saying that work continued via cell phone.

 
It would be appropriate and becoming at this time for the Clinton campaign to dial back anything that looks like an image associated with violence. Obama leads Clinton solidly in the popular vote, convention delegates, and number of states or contests won; feeling is running high in some sectors wooed by the Clintons; political figures of special gravitas including George McGovern are supporting Obama. While Clinton’s finances are by no means completely and transparently reported, they are acknowledged to be bad enough that Clinton has again lent her campaign money.

In other bad signs for Clinton, the blogosphere and commentators on the major television networks and cable channels have now acknowledged that she is losing. Her boosters in the large media outlets are mostly prominent neocons who pushed the Iraq war, notably Bill Kristol on Fox News and in the New York Times and Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, radio host Rush Limbaugh and the rightwing internet site NewsMax, supporting ‘Hillary’ as the opponent most beneficial to the chances of John McCain.

Exit polls from Democratic contests throughout the primary season show Clinton winning consistently and without exception only among voters who made up their minds just before each primary. She has maintained a hold on other target demographics—seniors, white men without college education, older white women—but not consistently.

What all these groups have in common is that they are the least likely to be reached by multiple sources of information, and most likely to rely for information on the corporate media outlets, primarily television.

Most importantly, it is mathematically impossible for Clinton to win the Democratic nomination through the electoral process. However, the campaign, relying on the information gap to safeguard a lead in a shrinking pool of less informed voters, is not sharing this math with its supporters. Instead, Clinton has recently taken to claiming, “I am ahead in the popular vote”—a stretch reached only by including votes cast in the Michigan and Florida non-primaries.

Regrettably, the Clintons have chosen to try to recoup at this juncture by running particularly aggressive negative ads, including this little beauty addressed to gun lovers everywhere.

For those of you not clicking the link, the picture in this Clinton flier is of a glamorous long gun, with Barack Obama’s head superimposed (smaller inset) near the barrel end.

This is the first time in my life that one candidate in a presidential campaign ran a campaign ad showing a gun aimed in the general direction of another candidate’s head.

Indeed, this is a first, in my recollection, for any campaign for any office at any level.

The last thing any responsible writer would want to do is to add fuel to the flames, but there is a realistic concern that things do not look to get sunnier and prettier in the immediate future. The Clinton campaign has expressed its intent of pressing on to West Virginia and Kentucky. Disavowal of the gun ad or distancing from the fierier sort of NRA anti-Obama voters is not likely on the horizon.

So, speaking of graceful and appropriate gestures, this might actually be a good time for the National Rifle Association to disavow the Clinton gun ad.

After all, waving or pointing a gun around in the general direction of another person is officially opposed by the NRA and is not in line with its safety standards. According to standards enunciated by the NRA, our political system recommends substituting ballots for bullets, not the other way around.

Messages placed to both the NRA and the Clinton campaign await response.