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Marc Ambinder's perspective on "Why Kennedy Matters" strikes me as interesting:
It allows Obama to further clarify what, for him, the Old Politics is all about -- that is, it allows him to separate the Politics of the Clintons from the politics of Democrats before the Clinton administration -- a party dominated by the Kennedy dynasty and their patrons, in many respects. And the The New Kennedy is even more of an attractive figure, in some respects. He has never shirked the responsibility of Democrats to beat up Republicans, but throughout his career, he has demonstrated a long arm for compromise. Most recently, He worked with President Bush on No Child Left Behind and with Mitt Romney (whether Romney currently accepts it or not) on health care in Massachusetts.In some ways, there may be no member of the Democratic pantheon who better reflects the consensus-based, transformative and activist-oriented politics that Obama embraces.What's been weird about this primary is that we've really not seen an argument over the Clinton administration's record. There've been allusions to it, mentions of triangulation, but very little in the way of an actual battle over the substance of Clintonism. For instance: Clinton actually lowered social investment as a share of GDP. When he came into office, it was 1.8 percent. When he left, it was 1.6 percent. And, at the time, this had consequences, it's what led to the rift between him and Robert Reich. Indeed, Bush, through the spending increases of No Child Left Behind, has actually increased social investment over the course of his presidency, pushing it from 1.6 percent to 1.8 percent. In 2003 and 2006, it was 2.0 percent, which is higher than it ever got during Clinton's presidency.Does that mean I'd take Bush over Clinton? Of course not. Clinton did a lot of good, and social investment isn't everything, or even near to it. And, presumably, Obama's campaign has run the polls, and knows they shouldn't get into a debate over the Clinton administration's record. But that's actually constrained the space for policy debate and distinction in this primary. There's a lot to argue over, and Kennedy himself represents many of those arguments, but all the Obama campaign has been willing to do is gesture towards them, which is, in part, why they've had trouble showing where they substantively diverge from Clinton. So what we've had, oddly, are a lot of debates over how Hillary Clinton voted in the Bush years, but not over the priorities and choices of the Clinton administration, which is where all of her advisers and most of her experience comes from.
