Following up on yesterday’s discussion, Sen. Edward Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama at an event in DC about an hour ago. It was apparently a well-attended event — Salon’s Tim Grieve reported, “After standing outdoors for more than two hours in a line that stretched along several blocks — and eventually getting within 20 feet of the entrance doors — we were told that the roughly 6,000-seat Bender Auditorium at American University was completely full. At least several thousand people were in line behind us.”
The AP noted that Kennedy’s support for the Illinois senator was quite enthusiastic.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday as a “man with extraordinary gifts of leadership and character,” a worthy heir to his assassinated brother.
“I feel change in the air. What about you?” Kennedy said in a speech salted with scarcely veiled criticism of Obama’s chief rival for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as her husband, the former president. […]
“From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth,” he said, an obvious reference to former President Clinton’s statement that Obama’s early anti-war stance was a “fairy tale.”
“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion. With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay,” Kennedy said.
As I’ve noted more than once, I’m generally skeptical about whether high-profile endorsements translate to actual votes, but given Ted Kennedy’s near-unparalleled stature in the party, it’s worth considering today’s announcement in more detail.
Jon Cohn and Marc Ambinder both have interesting items exploring the significance of Kennedy’s endorsement, but I thought I’d summarize with some bullet-points. The benefits:
* Obama needs a boost among Latinos, union members, downscale workers, and the liberal establishment, and each of these constituencies hold Kennedy in the highest regard.
* Kennedy’s stature among older Dems couldn’t be higher, and Obama needs to make more inroads among seniors.
* Post-South Carolina, Obama wants to keep up the momentum, particularly in the media, and today helps.
* Kennedy, in many ways, embodies the pragmatic liberalism Obama has in mind. As Ambinder put it, “In some ways, there may be no member of the Democratic pantheon who better reflects the consensus-based, transformative and activist-oriented politics that Obama embraces.”
* Massachusetts is a delegate-rich Feb. 5 state, and Obama now has support from both Kennedy and Gov. Deval Patrick.
* The JFK connection the Obama campaign has been subtly pushing (at times, not so subtly) just got a big boost.
* As Cohn put it, there have been many with “misgivings … that Obama was insufficiently committed to a progressive policy agenda and that he lacked the savvy to enact an ambitious, necessarily controversial agenda.” If Kennedy backs him, those misgivings are at least partially alleviated.
* The Obama campaign gets to say, “Kennedy saw both Obama and Clinton up close, working side by side. And he wants Obama to be president.”
Maybe these points will give Obama a boost; maybe not. But my hunch is, putting aside logic, polls, and charts, there are a whole lot of Dems who, on just a gut level, are willing to take Ted Kennedy’s word for it. Ezra had an item this morning about his grandmother.
Throughout this primary, there’s been very little I could bank on. Certainly not my preference in candidates. That changed with the tides. Not the preferences of my friends, or the voters. The candidates themselves shifted and shimmered and changed, and so did the campaigns they ran. But there was one thing I could count on: My grandmother did not like Barack Obama. Not one little bit. No sir.
Yesterday, she told me she voted for him.
There were a couple of reasons. One, “it’s your generation’s turn. We’ve screwed everything up. Now you get a chance.” That, alone, though, wasn’t enough. “I think it’s terrible how that Mr. Clinton acted.” My grandmother still admires and respects Hillary, but Bill’s behavior has alienated her from the Clinton campaign. “It’s just terrible,” she said. And, finally, “I read Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement, and if her and Ted Kennedy are endorsing, he must be okay.”
It’s a very human response: If Kennedy likes Obama, Obama must be pretty good.
So, will the endorsement make a difference? Arguably, the trick is to figure out just how many Dems there are who think like Ezra’s grandmother. Stay tuned.