(image via nytimes)
The public disclosure of Senator Ted Kennedy's recent illness as well as the 40th anniversary of the Death of RFK has put us all in a Kennedy state of mind, remembering, collectively, all that that in some ways tragic family have given up for their country. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who has an acute sense of American History and the importance of rhetoric therein, is presently pivoting with deftness from comparisons to Lincoln, which he courted in the Primaries, to comparisons to the Kennedy's, in general election mode.
The naming of Caroline Kennedy Sclossberg on presumptive Democrat nominee Obama's Vice Presidential search committee certainly gave the Chattering Classes something to talk about this week. The Clintonista's were rightly put off by this appointment, as Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg -- as well as so many other Democrats -- is no longer a fan of the Clintons, after the filthy South Carolina ghettoization of Senator Obama. The Clinton pleas were afterwards ignored (Averted Gaze); endorsement-wise the Kennedy's were cleft in twain: Ted and Caroline with Obama, Kathleen Townsend Kennedy and Robert, Jr. with Hillary.
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's comparison of Obama to her father in that NYTimes Op-Ed pulled the Senator into the ideological orbit of The Kennedy legacy. In it, Caroline writes:
"My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.
"Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.
"We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960."
The parallels are uncanny. John Avalon on Yahoo! writes:
"Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination almost 40 years to the day after Robert F. Kennedy's assassination the night he won the California primary. RFK died on June 6th, 1968.
"And he will accept his party's nomination on another fateful day - the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
"This coincidence of the calendar underscores the way in which Obama's candidacy symbolizes a step toward resolution of the shattered dreams of mid-1960s moderate liberalism."
Certainly there are benefits to bathing the Obama candidacy in a Kenndy-ish nimbus. Obama's has a curious problem with the working class white vote -- the "Scots-Irish" in particular -- a problem that the Kennedy's, Irish fighters all, have never encountered. Even with the support of the enormously popular Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, Obama lost the blue-collar vote to Hillary Clinton in that Kennedy stronghold. Racism is a factor -- we cannot fail to note the Southies -- but since the Governor, also an Obama supporter, is African-American, there could be something more to it. From Counterpunch:
"One key to Obama's loss was that Hillary waltzed into the working class areas of central MA, which the tonier neighborhoods of Boston consider to be somewhere near Utah, and made her case. In central Mass if you see an antiwar sign, it is likely to bear Ron Paul's name. So Hillary campaigned in the depressed cities of Worcester and Springfield--and won. In those areas, the slogans, 'Yes, we can,' and 'Together we can,' remained a mystery. The folks there lack the Ivy education, more properly understood as a finely honed herd instinct, which it clearly takes to understand the sayings of Obama. Whether or not the working class voters of the poor cities of Massachusetts believed Hillary, at least she said something comprehensible."
Much of that Obama's loss in Massachusetts was due to the same overall factors that kept Obama's vote totals minuscule outside of Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania primary. Race, of course, played a factor in the NASCAR-watching "Pennsyltucky" region. Obama plays magnificently in college auditoriums in the large cities to sophisticates, but his campaign has not been that effective with boots-on-the-ground beyond the suburbs and into the boonies where white blue collar Catholics and union members reside. The Kennedy nimbus, to a degree, can help; but without boots-on-the-ground the "Reagan Democrats" might veer towards McCain as they did towards Hillary Clinton, who went to great lengths to sip the gay whiskey.
Kennedy icons are often found in the homes of Reagan Democrats. RFK's no-nonsense, union-busting, pro-working-man style in his 1968 Presidential campaign -- emulated, so brilliantly, by John Edwards on the campaign trail in 2004 -- is something that Senator Obama would do well to embody. Obama needs to channel John Edwards' campaign and run a pro-working class battle for the Presidency.
And it looks, in the patina of RFK's assassination, like this is happening already.
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