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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

RIP The Liberal Lion
Posted by jurassicpork | 11:05 AM

About the only good thing that could be said about Ted Kennedy's cancer was that he was too ill to preside over a Town Hall meeting without having to be harassed by wingnuts screaming about death panels and euthanizing Grandma.

A major chapter in American politics closed last night when, exactly one year after his rousing appearance at last year's Democratic National Convention, Ted Kennedy succumbed to his glioma brain cancer.

If you have a small child or have ever had a small child who went to Head Start, you have Ted Kennedy to thank for that. Whatever small progressive reforms the Senate let him have for your health care plan, you have Ted Kennedy to thank for that, too. Any help that ever came out of the Senate for working class families had Ted Kennedy's fingerprints and DNA on it.

Senator Edward Kennedy was like Mother Teresa, Walter Cronkite, Queen Elizabeth II and Fidel Castro. No matter how old you are, chances are pretty good that these people have been around and still calling the shots your entire life. After a while, you begin to take their immortality for granted.

Yet Kennedy's 77 year-long life span cannot nor should not be measured in purely political terms. He remembered meeting FDR as a child, forging that tenuous link uniting one liberal champion to another. The third longest-serving Senator of all time had seen it all: The Cuban Missile crisis; the assassination of both his brothers; Martin Luther King's assassination; two major recessions; four wars and was right in the middle of the health care debate up until almost the very end.

Kennedy and his family were forged as much by tragedy as any family had a right to be. Having lived through the deaths of both parents, three brothers and three nephews and, just recently, his sister Eunice, Senator Kennedy's life was a large slice of American history. He had lived center stage in it for almost exactly the last third of the history of our republic.


Few will forget Ted Kennedy coming out after his cancer was diagnosed and heartily endorsing Barack Obama at the Democratic convention with strong but failing voice, his shirt collar and tie hanging loosely about his neck. It evoked in its own way, the dying Lou Gehrig's legendary farewell to baseball. And even in the twilight of his career, when he must have known he was fighting a losing battle with cancer, the senior senator from Massachusetts vowed to be back on the floor on the Senate come January to fight for health care reform. Instead, Ted Kennedy collapsed after suffering a seizure during Barack Obama's inauguration day luncheon. That same day, Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving incumbent senator, was also taken to the hospital on hearing the news.

It's up for speculation who Governor Deval Patrick will appoint as Kennedy's successor or if he will honor the Senator's final wish and to rewrite the law so that he could appoint a temporary successor so as not to interrupt Massachusetts' representation during the health care debate.

But whoever the Bay State's governor appoints, one thing is obvious: The history that Ted Kennedy, a man who'd cast nearly 15,000 votes in the Senate, had both lived and made will not be repeated, reproduced nor relived and his successor will have unusually large expectations to honor.
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7 Comments:
Blogger Cujo359 said...
I don't believe that Gov. Patrick will do an interim appointment. Massachusetts law doesn't allow them. Kennedy asked Patrick to get the law changed, but it seems unlikely this will happen.
8/26/09, 1:03 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...
The current law was only put in place in 2004 when Mitt Romney was governor. The Massachusetts legislature should just same themselves all the effort and simply pass a new law that says "The governor can backfill a vacant senate seat if he's a Democrat but not if he's a Republican" and be done with it.
8/26/09, 4:07 PM  
Blogger Steve said...
Well, Barry, 4 states, Arizona, Utah, Hawaii and Wyoming require their guvs to replace a vacant senate seat with someone from the same party as had held it. Not surprisingly they are all repo depots. Is that OK with you?
8/26/09, 4:42 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...
First of all, I doubt these states change their laws every time their governor changes parties. Second of all, both Hawaii's senators are Democrats, so you are full of shit. Have a good day!
8/26/09, 7:53 PM  
Blogger jurassicpork said...
So, in other words, Barry, IOKIYAR? Go fuck yourself you right wing hack.
8/26/09, 11:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Maybe if the national republican party wasnt batshit crazy they would have more than 5 people vote for them in the ENTIRE northeast.
8/27/09, 5:46 AM  
Blogger Steve said...
Barry is right. Hawaii is a democratic stronghold but according to many wingnut birthers it is as much of a state as Kenya is.

As we all know, Real America consists of the former states of the Confederacy with Quantrill's stomping grounds thrown in.

Good thing Reagan had enough White Out to eradicate that "Party of Lincoln" shit.
8/27/09, 12:03 PM  
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