Endorsement Politics

By KAREN TUMULTY

When Edward Kennedy bestowed his blessing on Barack Obama at a thunderous rally in Washington, he had only sweet words about Obama's chief rival for the Democratic nomination--at least when he mentioned Hillary Clinton by name. But it was hard to miss what the senior member of one of the U.S.'s most storied Democratic clans was really saying about the political style of another dynastic family. Obama, Kennedy declared, "has given America a different kind of campaign--a campaign not just about himself but about all of us."

In many ways, the Democratic race has become a referendum on Clintonism and the politics of the 1990s. The way the Clintons see it, those grimy battles prove they can beat the worst things the Republicans or anyone else can throw their way. If their opponents want to relitigate a decade of peace overseas and brimming 401(k)s at home, the Clintons say, bring it on.

But there are many in the party establishment who don't remember the history of that decade quite that way. What they recall is the "triangulation" that made Democrats on Capitol Hill nearly irrelevant. And they are still trying to recover, they say, from the wreckage that was left behind. While Bill Clinton fought his way to being the first Democratic President since F.D.R. to be re-elected, the party lost its majorities in the House and the Senate, as well as in the governors' mansions and statehouses across the country.

Clinton still maintains a formidable edge with many of those party leaders and elected officials, including those who by virtue of their positions go to the party convention as "superdelegates." But superdelegates are notoriously fickle. As a big Democratic fund raiser puts it, "They are the Claude Rains of politics; whichever way the wind blows, the superdelegates will follow." And right now, the Clinton campaign is spending enormous effort holding onto the ones they have, with both Clintons staying in constant contact with delegates feared to be wavering.

What has to be making them nervous is that more and more of the Democratic establishment, particularly on Capitol Hill, is breaking rank with the Clintons--despite the fact that she is leading in the polls and, if elected, may be disinclined to forgive turncoats. Kennedy's defection followed those of 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry (along with many of his biggest fund raisers) and Vermont's Pat Leahy. Obama also counts among his growing list of supporters Senators such as Tim Johnson, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson and Claire McCaskill, as well as governors Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius, who hail from red states where Democrats openly worry about what could happen to the rest of the ticket if Hillary Clinton is perched at the top.

It's too early to fully gauge what impact John Edwards' departure will have on the Democratic race. His voters may well favor Clinton over Obama. But his superdelegates are already joining the Obama movement. Even before the former North Carolina Senator dropped out of the race on Jan. 30, at least two of his congressional backers had shifted their endorsements to Obama, and more are expected to follow.

Obama has inherited much of former Democratic leader Tom Daschle's political organization--and with it, Daschle, who is one of Obama's most committed campaigners. In arguing that it is time to turn a new page, Daschle says of the Clintons, "I don't know if it's possible to put all that history behind."

What has brought to the fore many of these long-simmering tensions between the Clintons and the senior ranks of the party has been the emergence of Bill Clinton as his wife's chief attack dog against Obama. "This is exactly what the next eight years will look like if she gets elected," fumes a nationally prominent Democrat. Two weeks before Kennedy came out publicly for Obama, Kennedy confronted Bill Clinton about his hardfisted tactics in an angry late-night phone call.

There is a paradox in all this. The Clintons came to Washington as the avatars of a new kind of politics. If the Clintons indeed built the bridge they promised to build to the 21st century, the question now is whether their party wants to see them on the other side of it.