Edwards 4 Obama
Tonight. In time for the evening news, John Edwards will endorse Obama, according to ABC News.
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You wondered if/when Edwards would endorse? Answer was: At the point when his endorsement would wrap it up for Obama (or, if things had gone much better for her, Hillary).
Clinton’s decision early on to defend PACs and special interests as people too, and not merely a necessary evil in the fundraising forest, aligned Edwards and Obama as the “Change” options to her “Billary Restoration” campaign, a point Edwards made forcefully in the New Hampshire debate when he tried his darndest to usher her out of the race. As it turned out, his attack on her backfired (remember the tears?) and three weeks later, he was out. Since then, however, Clinton’s been the candidate who worked harder at appealing to Edwards’ blue-collar constituency, and her universal health-care package is a faithful copy of Edwards’ plan, something Elizabeth Edwards has taken to pointing out. So Edwards has been content to bide his time and throw his support to one or the other of his ex-rivals only when he/she was on the verge of victory — key word, verge. If he’d waited any longer, Obama would’ve wrapped it up without him. As it is, Clinton’s lopsided victory in West Virginia last night made it seem like Obama was in need of a momentum-breaker. Enter Johnny.
Edwards, back when he was retracing Bobby Kennedy’s trip through Appalachian poverty, made a lot of friends in Kentucky. Look for him to join Obama there in the days before next Tuesday’s Kentucky primary, where Hillary is heavily favored, but anything short of West Virgina-order blowout will be seen as an Obama comeback. And if Obama, as expected, wins the Oregon primary that night, it should end this so-called “contest” once, for all and officially, with Clinton dropping out.
May 27th, 2008 16:08
In a sense, former Sen. John Edwards was reprising and giving fresh insights to two separate paths of Robert Kennedy’s political career, one as attorney general in the administration of President John Kennedy and one as a U.S. senator from New York and presidential candidate in his own right in 1968. Looking back on the 2004 and 2008 campaign, one can see that this was no easy task by any means for the former senator from North Carolina but also that he kept to his mission faithfully and assiduously.
I think it should have been recalled by the press in this campaign that in addition to his own political career in the U.S. Senate and as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was also President John F. Kennedy’s closest political associate during the JFK administration as he had been in the 1960 campaign.
We have heard a lot of appeals to recall the inspirational character of the Kennedy administration, which is both understandable and laudable, but have we forgotten just what an integral role RFK played in the day-to-day activities of the Kennedy White House as U.S. attorney general?
Moreover, during the sensitive yet urgent negotiations and discussions between the Kennedy administration and governors and U.S.senators from Southern states toward the purpose of achieving state-level compliance with recent federal statutes and judicial rulings on the entire range of public desegregation issues faced by the country in the early 1960s, it was Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy who often was the most important personal communications link between the administration and the affected state governments.
The record shows that a great number of Southern political leaders found Atty. Gen. Kennedy determined but fair-minded in spelling out to Southern state governments just what their responsibilites were in complying with changing federal law and recent applicable federal court rulings.
Not only in the 2008 presidential campaing but in a number of previous campaigns in which the example of JFK’s leadership became a centerpiece of political discussion, such as in 1968, 1988 and 2000, while the important themes, accomplishments and vision of the Kennedy administration were quite appropriately recalled to the public mind, the unglamous but indispensable day-to-day work of coordinating executive initiatives at the federal level with executive and legislative responses at the state level may have been overlooked. Atty. Gen. Kennedy was closely involved with all these efforts at the presidential level in his brother’s administration.
Thus some previous Democratic presidential candidates, who may not have ultimately won nomination or general election campaigns, nonetheless helped clarify many of these administrative needs and priorities for the voters in successive periods of latter-20th Century history–for example, the campaigns of Sens. Mo Udall and Henry Jackson in 1976, former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984, Sen. Gary Hart in 1988 and Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Paul Tsongas in 1992.
So regardless of when the Democratic presidential nominee in this year’s campaign is finally determined, it should be remembered that in their own different oratorical styles and philosphical approaches, both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton have succeeded in remarkable ways in reminding us of the work that still remains for the Nation and calling us to the task, not only from the historical experience of the past four decades but also looking ahead to the next quarter of a century.
In yet another year when the example of John F. Kennedy has been given such prominent mention by candidates and their respective supporters, let us remember just what it took to bring about the step-by-step gains in national equality of opportunity and legal justice.
David Proctor McKnight
Durham
1990 Democratic nominee, U.S. House of Representatives, 9th District of North Carolina