Where has Ted Kennedy’s endorsement actually helped Obama’s campaign?
The correct answer thus far is nowhere.
Even in his home state of Massachusetts, Kennedy’s lip-lock on Obama meant nothing. What counted more in the final analysis was Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino, a doer like Hillary, who helped boost the Clinton campaign to victory.
For the greater part of four decades, Ted Kennedy has been a symbol of what is worst in old-style liberalism. If there is a far left position to be taken, count on Kennedy to make it his own. Other than aging sycophants still dazed by memories of Camelot and the Kennedy name, Ted Kennedy has impressed few outsiders with either his political skills or his ability to get things done. This Kennedy is viewed by most as an embarrassment: a heavy drinker who refuses to get help, a cheater whose behavior resulted in the death of young Mary Jo Kopechne, and a source of renewable energy: hot air.
If you are wondering why he keeps getting re-elected, the explanation is simple. Long ago the people of the Bay State resigned themselves to having Kennedy as their senator. To them, he is like bumper-to-bumper traffic on Storrow Drive or high taxes, afflictions sent by a punishing God that they endure as best they can, praying meanwhile for relief.
The irony, of course, is that Obama, who is supposed to represent change, saved his greatest chest-thumping for Kennedy, a symbol of the past. What they have in common is their misogyny, a hatred of all things Clinton, and a rhetoric as airy as movie theater popcorn.
Kennedy is up in Maine this week, trying to be useful to Obama. Given the quirky nature of Maine Democrats, he didn’t need to go. Among those heading to the Maine caucuses, Obama is already the Chosen One.
But I suppose Kennedy will find a way to take credit for the inevitable.
2 responses so far ↓
whydidyoudoit // February 9, 2008 at 11:04 pm
According to the demographics, I should be voting for Hillary Clinton: I’m a white, 60-year-old, highly educated woman from the Northeast. But I’m voting for Obama. I’ve waited all my life for a viable woman candidate for the presidency, but this is not the right woman. I want a woman of the highest ability and virtue, who would serve as a glorious role model to all young women. Hillary Clinton is not that woman.
She rode into power with her husband, and together they’ve acquired a long and seriously flawed history of self-serving and secretive financial and political dealings. The most cursory research will prove that true. She started out her political life supporting the racist Barry Goldwater. She is as comfortable with deception and trickery as George Bush. When I hear woman saying, “Oh, but that’s how you get things done in Washington,” I literally cringe.
I am passionately supporting Barack Obama. He can beat the Republicans; she cannot. Obama has attracted Independents and even Republicans to his camp, and in a general election they would vote for him, but not for Clinton. Clinton voted for the war, and has never apologized for it. Obama has spoken out against it from the beginning. Obama brings us hope–and not just that. Take a serious look at his ideas and experience.
Please, I beg of you, Sisters young and old: wait for the right woman. Then we can be proud.
Diane Wald
Rake Morgan // February 10, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Thank you for your comment.
Obama has neither experience nor ideas. Only impressionable ideologues who think “soaring rhetoric” qualifies someone to be president could possibly support him. Hillary won in New Hampshire precisely because independents and women trust her, not Obama.
Obama is a “feel good” choice that will lead to ruin in the general election. Anyone — as I do — who remembers our feel good choice in George McGovern knows that is what will happen.
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