It's been a long, hard grind. Hillary and Obama have been at it for months; and although it has been at times brutal, many democrats think that the fight has been good for the party and for the eventual nominee.

No one can question the brilliance of the two candidates...Barack from out of nowhere with a rock star image has energised many voters and Hillary who many thought would have been the automatic shoe-in has had some memorable comebacks and proved she is as tough as nails.

So much have we bought into Hillary being the comeback kid that even with the math screaming for months now that it would have been virtually impossible to win the nomination, many diehard supporters continued the fight, and even others ...political analysts, pundits and incredible spinning men...people who should all know better, at some time, sounded like bumbling, doubting Thomases who all skipped Miss Dawn's math classes.

They touted the impossibility of her nomination and the inevitability of Barack Obama; but in the same breath, hinted that they doubted themselves and the reality of the numbers. I wondered if these people knew something I didn't know...maybe deep down it was that there was a feeling that the unthinkable could happen to Obama...like...hmmm...being hit by a meteor falling out of the sky?

Supporters, political analysts, pundits, incredible spinning men, and doubting Thomases aside, though we now know why Hillary has remained defiant insisting she is in this till the very end. In a comment to the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, SD, after being pressed as to why she remained in the race against such incredible odds, Clinton first pointed out that that her husband didn't lock up the nomination until June in 1992. And though the circumstances existing then would have been much different, that simple factual statement would have been enough...but then she added the unthinkable...stirring the pot like only a rooky politician would have been expected to: "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California", added the lady seeking to be the first of her gender to occupy the White House as President.

Bobby Kennedy's assassination? Even if you think it, how do you even come to mention something like that in public...such a tragic chain of events that caused so much pain for the country and for the Kennedy family. Well, all I can say is that if there was any hint of a comeback, the optimistic mathematicians should now know it's all over.

It's one thing for Americans to relish a good fight; but to invoke such a tragic memory and especially in the context of referring to your opponent...a tone so ungracious, would be asking a bit too much. Sound the death knell...if voters, by and large, felt  that Hillary had unfairly attacked Obama during the campaign, this comment will, I guarantee for many reasons, be the final straw.

Don't believe...just check the wires. Already a firestorm is brewing and Hillary herself must have issued the quickest apology in history: "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive, I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever,". Very noble...but too little too late. Invoking the Kennedy assassination, especially given the mood after the recent sobering cancer diagnosis of Senator Ted Kennedy, is a sign of unimaginable outward desperation.

It's a clear indication that the 2008 democratic race, for all its drama, has gone on for way too long and a stark reminder to Hillary and her supporters, fuzzy math aside, that the Hillary 2008 train has long derailed.