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Novak: Bill Clinton Helped Cause Ted Kennedy To Endorse Obama

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.
Feb 3rd, 2008 | Comments

It turns out that Senator Ted Kennedy had the exact same reaction as yours-truly when it comes to former President Bill Clinton’s campaign behavior — only Teddy has a tad more clout. Columnist Robert Novak reports:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy may have endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president anyway, but his support was hastened by Bill Clinton’s disregard of Kennedy’s plea for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign to moderate anti-Obama rhetoric.

Kennedy has told associates the former president listened politely to his telephoned advice to dial down criticism of Obama that emphasized him as the African-American candidate. Then Clinton turned around and continued to zing Obama in campaigning for the South Carolina primary. Kennedy likes Hillary Clinton but is not so keen about her husband.


This is precisely what we’ve said on our posts.

LEFT ALONE, Hillary Clinton is an increasingly-appealing candidate and she is coming across as competent, tough and highly-knowledgeable in her debates, TV appearances and speeches. Her husband has not been helping her campaign but rather tripping it up.

If voters perceive (in the primaries but particularly in the general election) that voting for Hillary means voting for two Presidents, then it could hurt her. And it will diminish her historical role and the fact that her name may be why she is in the running but she comes across as a strong candidate who has good buzz as New York Senator.

It’ll be interesting to see if there is another Bill Clinton Story between now and Super Tuesday. Shall we take bets now?

  • DLS
    There are other reasons for Kennedy to endorse Obama.

    "On foreign policy, for example, Obama's liberal score of 92 and conservative score of 7 indicate that he was more liberal in that issue area than 92 percent of the senators and more conservative than 7 percent. Clinton was more liberal than 83 percent of the senators on foreign policy and more conservative than 16 percent. ...

    In 2007, Obama's composite liberal score of 95.5 was the highest in the Senate. Rounding out the top five most liberal senators last year were Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., with a composite liberal score of 94.3; Joseph Biden, D-Del., with a 94.2; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with a 93.7; and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., with a 92.8.

    Clinton, meanwhile, tied as the 16th-most-liberal senator in 2007 with Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; both had a composite liberal score of 82.8. Clinton's home-state colleague, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was the 15th-most-liberal, with a composite score of 83. ...

    Overall in NJ's 2007 ratings, Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 key votes on which he voted; Clinton voted the liberal position 77 of 82 times. Obama garnered perfect liberal scores in both the economic and social categories. His score in the foreign-policy category was nearly perfect, pulled down a notch by the only conservative vote that he cast in the ratings, on a Republican-sponsored resolution expressing the sense of Congress that funding should not be cut off for U.S. troops in harm's way. The Senate passed the resolution 82-16 with the support of both Obama and Clinton. The 16 opponents included mostly liberals, such as Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Sanders.

    Clinton took the conservative position four other times in NJ's 2007 ratings. ...

    Kerry, who has endorsed Obama, told NJ on January 29 that attacks on his own liberalism had no impact on the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. That line of attack wouldn't work against Obama either, he said. 'The whole point, folks, is -- and the Republicans love to be simplistic and they also love to be wrong -- is that he represents somebody who's bringing together a broad coalition of people,' Kerry said. 'It's not going to stick. People are tired of the stupidity of these labels. They're tired of that game.'"

    http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/
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