Ted Kennedy Will Stay On The Fence, Probably

Seems like Hillary Clinton is worried that Ted Kennedy will endorse Barack Obama.

The betting among longtime Kennedy watchers, however, is that he will stay comfortably neutral.

Comments

Probably because Obama said he [Kennedy] didn't have a backbone . . .

Posted by LawSchoolDem | January 26, 2008 11:12 AM

I'd find it odd if he endorsed Obama. He's part of the elderly, bloated, enervated democratic leadership that Obama's campaign is meant to overturn. It would be a good get for Obama, but it's not going to happen.

Posted by Helter | January 26, 2008 12:20 PM

I'm thinking he's holding out from his deep love and respect for Massachusetts HomeState favorite, Mitt Romney.

Certainly if Romney was elected, Teddy would be far more relevant as a pointman Romney has worked with successfully - than he would be under the Hillaryistas.

Teddy, or I should say his advisors, are smart enough to know the Magic, eloquent Negro is unlikely to get the nod.

Posted by chris ford | January 26, 2008 12:24 PM

Ted Kennedey wants to endorse Obama, but he will probably be too intimidated by the Clintons to do so.

In fact, I would broaden the argument. I would posit that in a true secret ballot among leading dems as to who they would rather see as president, Obama would win in a landslide.

In a sense, many dems are showing the same lack of backbone they showed in the run up to the Iraq war. At that time, many dems opposed the war in their hearts, but they voted for the war because they feared Bush.

I think a similar dynamic is going on here and it is exposing the lack of backbone of many democrats and why our party so often caves to what is wrong.

I think the fact that many dems are acting this way kind of proves Obama's original point about people not having backbones.

By embracing, or tacitly condoning, Clintonism in the process, many of the deluded members of the dem party are putting a higher priotiry on the tactical stregngth of the Clintons over the superior principlas and message of Obama. This was the mistake the party made in 2004, thinking that the tactic of nominating a vietnam vet would outweight the fact that Kerry was very weak when it came to message and consistency and national electoral appeal.

In some ways, the fact that so many dems are so spineless against what the clintons are doing to this party means that they will deserve the electoral disaster that will be visited upon the party if Hillary is nominated.

Posted by RKA | January 26, 2008 12:47 PM

I don't know. If there is much more ugliness from the Clintons, Teddy might just get off the fence. We know that he is pretty unhappy with the way that Bill is conducting himself.

Posted by ikl | January 26, 2008 12:51 PM

Why would it do any democrat any good to come out for one side or the other unless it helps them in thier election or unless they were job seeking?
Ted has a million things left on his plans to seek change himself and he needs to stay on the sides until later rather than pick oneside or another.
One can imagine his amazing staff is evenly divided: why would he risk it?
last time he loaned a key staff person to Kerry and she got set up to take the fall for his poorly run campaign OR it really was her fault.
He's even older than john McCain, can't stand up straight and only has so much juice left.
But remember those pictures from the Clinton years of them boating off the cape or the vineyard.
Kerry looks dumb and sounds dumb: he was the last person to figure out no one wanted him to run again, that he was poison: almost as much so as Joe from CT

Posted by Michael C. | January 26, 2008 1:16 PM