Victoria Reggie Kennedy vs. Scott Brown

One has to ask yourself if the widow of the Liberal Lion in the U.S. Senate should even have to consider a run for his seat. As the wife of a man that was very passionate about his politics I’m sure there were many discussions at the dinner table regarding the events of the day. I’m sure that Victoria Reggie Kennedy learned by osmosis the skills needed to be an effective politician from her husband. She above all knows the bobbing and weaving that it takes to get half of what you want done in the U.S. Senate. That being said, nobody can force her to run against Scott Brown for the Liberal Lions seat when it comes to what would have been re-election of Teddy Kennedy. Some of the folks in the Democratic Party are thinking that she must run according to this piece in the Washington Post…

Prominent Democrats want Kennedy's widow to run for his Senate seat

By Mary Ann Akers and Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 15, 2010

Nearly one year after Edward M. Kennedy's death, prominent Democrats in Washington and Massachusetts are promoting his widow as the party's best shot at winning back the Senate seat he held for nearly five decades.

Though she has seemed to bat down the idea of challenging Sen. Scott Brown (R) in 2012, Victoria Reggie Kennedy has been in some ways acting the part of a candidate. She has raised her public profile by campaigning for other politicians and appearing at events across the country.

The prospect of her candidacy is fast becoming a source of family tension, according to several Kennedy intimates. Some relatives fear that a campaign against Brown -- a popular figure even in liberal Massachusetts -- would distract Kennedy from promoting her late husband's legacy, they said. - Washington Post

Should she consider it? Of course she should! There is no greater insult to her husbands memory than the fact that a Republican out maneuvered a well known Democrat and won the race because he fought harder for it. Teddy Kennedy never saw a fight that wasn’t worth winning, and true to Kennedy family history, he won when others gave up simply because he refused to quit. But there is no dishonor to her husbands memory in her choosing not to run.

Thus, the question becomes, why are his children not choosing to run for their fathers seat? Why has the entire Kennedy clan not put up a liberal wannabe lion in his place for the Senate? Why isn’t Governor Deval Patrick not throwing his hat in the ring?

The answer to that question is the target on your back if you win from the Republican political party machine. Teddy had tough skin and never left the core of his belief to any other interpretation other than the fact that he was THE LIBERAL LION.

I think it would be fair to say that Vickie served her country already as the wife of one of the greatest political leaders in many generations of Democrats. It’s time for others to pick up the torch and run with the ferocity of a lion that needs to get the job done for the people they are representing. And it is her own choice if she sees fit to do so on her own terms.

Papamoka

I Choose to See the Glass as Half-Full on Health Care

Hello Papamoka Bloggers! It's been a roller-coaster of a week trying to ride the ups and downs related to the health care debate in Washington and across the country right now. To be really honest, the reason it took me so long to post this week was due to extreme conflict within my own mind about how to react to events. I don't like to blog unless I feel well-informed and comfortable about an issue, and this one has pushed me to the limit.

First of all, I would like to say that I think the Republicans and a few bought-and-paid-for "conservative" Democrats are doing a great job lying about the health care debate. Like the president says, they are out there sewing fear hoping to terrorize the electorate. They are using every opportunity to skew the debate, distracting people from the real legislation.

It's sad to say that their tactics are working somewhat, since most of the national polls are showing a decline in support for the health care initiative overall, however, it's interesting to note that when the polls actually tell people what's in the primary legislation, the overwhelming majority of Americans favor it. It's also important to point out that most of the polls are misleading, manipulative and unworthy of reporting.

I don't wish to get into the nitty-gritty of the debate in this post seeing that I want to talk more about why we need to stay focused, but suffice it to say that after talking to a few Washington insiders this week I feel better about the delay and most of the legislation being debated in the House and Senate.

The bill forged by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) led by Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) are very positive. Their work along with a few other Senate committees provide some kind of public option and clean-up most of what is wrong with the health care system in America. Hopefully the Senators will be able to find common ground during their August break.

We should be highly skeptical about the legislation coming out of Senate Finance led by Baucus (D-MT) and Grassley (R-IA) pushing for eliminating employee health benefits in favor of ineffective health cooperatives, but the good news from what I hear is they do not have the support of the majority of Democrats in the Senate.

I also hear they've earned a bit of a bad rep lately. The other Senators fully realize just how much health care industry money has been pumped into that committee, so much so that it's been embarrassing for many in the Senate. FYI, after working up there, Senators do keep an eye on their colleagues and donations - often looking for motive before a vote. They don't always like it when committees sellout to overzealous industry profiteers.

Donations from lobbyists work best when the amounts donated to each politician remain secret. When the process takes time and legal reporting leads to open accounting (past legislation thanks to Democrats), it can create conflicts between officials. There are signs it is beginning to happen in relation to the Senate Finance Committee, as some Washington insiders report many are tiring of Baucus and his industry friends.

There is also the fact that most of the committee chairs and co-chairs receiving the bulk of the money represent less than 3% of all Americans - a fact that sticks-in-the-craw of many elected officials.

The other side of this debate is - of course - the Republican lies. They are bigger and better than ever. Again, despite the August delay, I'm hearing good news from my friends in Washington. There are signs the Republicans may have gone too far once again. They may have "jumped the shark" in their opposition to health care. Many are reporting that their latest lies - the elimination of Medicare, loss of personal health care choices, and forced living wills and early death - may be one step too far to say the least.

It doesn't matter if Hannity, Limbaugh and others repeat the lies ad nausea, as long as they can easily be disproved. In the end, the lies themselves can ruin the credibility of the opposition.

The polls show that when Americans learn about the primary legislation, they support it. The bulk of the legislation goes far enough to solve most of our health care problems. The special interest groups have been spending millions on ads and the polls haven't changed that much. Most important, the president and others are willing to sacrifice their valuable political capital (something most politicians won't do) to get a bill. If the legislators spend August learning about the options and informing their constituents, then we may just have a chance to change the system come Fall.

To me, the glass is half-full. To me, the signs are pointing in the right direction.

It's easy to get discouraged these days when it comes to Washington, politicians, corporate greed and especially all the Republican lies. It's harder to actually do the heavy lifting, oppose the "ends justify the means" crowd" and fight the good fight. That's what we need our politicians to do. We need them to stay focused, and to ignore the ignorant rants of the uninformed. We need them to follow the president's lead, stay strong, and pass real health care reform for the majority of Americans who support it.

PS - Please consider contacting your elected representatives often to remind them we support real health care reform with a strong and effective public option.

Michael Boh

Papamoka's Left Coast Contributor
from Our Rants & Raves Blog

Teddy Kennedy and Liberal Ideology

Picture courtesy of Stephan Savoia / AP

With the sad news that Senator Teddy Kennedy is ill, I offer my personal prayers to him, his wife, and his children. I personally don’t know what he will have to go through but I’m sure he will get the best care available. After all he is in and from the so called Mecca of medical science research state. Something he was instrumental in helping to create in the Bay State.

If there is a human medical condition that needed treatment then it was his liberal ideology that worked the government channels over the decades to get the groundwork started in research and eventual treatment. While others were working on bridges to nowhere he was working on the highways of advanced medical science projects here in Massachusetts. Something he spent a lifetime in public service for not just America but the world.

Over at MSNBC they have this on the Senators condition…

NBC News and news services
updated 4:27 p.m. ET, Tues., May. 20, 2008

BOSTON - A cancerous brain tumor caused the seizure Sen. Edward M. Kennedy suffered over the weekend, doctors said Tuesday in a grim diagnosis for one of American politics' most enduring figures.

The Massachusetts Democrat has a malignant glioma in the left parietal-lobe, according to doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Kennedy, 76, has been undergoing tests since Saturday after having a seizure at his Cape Cod home.

The usual course of treatment includes combinations of radiation and chemotherapy, but Kennedy's treatment will be decided after more tests. - MSNBC

If you have been getting all your news on the Senators condition from television then hold that thought for a second and read on. Senator Kennedy is not dead! He isn’t in a coma or incoherent and out of touch with his faculties. Yes, he has a brain tumor but he’s probably had it for some time now and has been functioning pretty damn well for a 76 year old man. I give his beautiful wife Victoria the credit for his amazing health up to this point and she deserves a ton of credit for that. Behind every great man is a greater woman telling him to knock off the bad boy behavior. To his credit he listened to her. Love is grand like that and with her help he has accomplished so much more than he could have without her.

While I understand that the Senator is sick the fact remains that he is not dead! He has cancer and that is not a death sentence as much as it was even ten years ago. Yes he will have to slow down his schedule but he should have done that ten years ago. Kennedy’s, you can’t talk to them at any age to ever slow down and I’m sure Victoria has been telling him that fact for years and that he can’t be everywhere for everyone all the time. Have you ever known a Kennedy to not be there for anyone?

Back years ago Senator Kennedy helped my father when he was up against a wall of Pentagon double speak. Dad was a proud Veteran of WWII and Korea, a Purple Heart Veteran, a highly decorated man that wanted to just display his medals in a case to pass on to his sons. He had lost his medals in the course of raising seven children for service to his nation. Creating future taxpayers for his nation post war was a challenge and if you know how large families are, stuff just disappears. Everywhere and everyone in the military that Dad wrote to turned up with negative replies for help or no reply at all. At the insistence of his wife, my mother, he contacted Senator Kennedy and thought he would never see his medals ever again. Less than a month later Dad received a box in the mail from Senator Kennedy’s office with all of the medals and ribbons he received during all of his service time. That was the first time that I saw my father cry in front of me, the second was my mothers funeral.

My family lived on a truck driver industry paycheck and had no political influence and yet with this one simple act of kindness or desire to be a true public servant he won the hearts and minds of seven children that are now adults. Public service isn’t always about the big details, sometimes it just about touching one persons heart that wins a lifetime of support. We all feel compassion but Senator Kennedy is the Liberal Ideology of America.

Senator Kennedy will slow down during his treatment just as everyone else that has had cancer and the treatment that goes with it to survive it. Will he survive it? Only God knows that answer. Do I have hope for him? Yes I do! No matter what you see on the television about expected survival rates or prognosis on his chances I still come back to the fact that he is a Kennedy. Teddy Kennedy has never been someone afraid of any challenge in his life and this is just another hurdle to overcome. I wish him luck and prayers with this battle. By all means do not count him out of the political arena by a long shot, but do keep him in your thoughts and prayers. We all need those prayers in these difficult times.

Politically, as cold as it sounds, as Senator Kennedy must wind down the twilight of his years in the Senate and in his life, we must choose a standard bearer that will meet the gold standard example he has set in his lifetime of public service. In that thought process, look to Senator Kennedy to offer the wisdom he holds true to his heart. Who can carry the torch he held and propel his dreams, his brothers dreams, onto the next generation of Americans?

Get well Teddy, we love ya!

Papamoka

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