Trailhead: A campaign blog.

Obama's California Strategy

A quick eyeball of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s campaign schedule for Barack Obama makes the strategy pretty clear: National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, N.M.; Santa Fe Community College; gatherings in Los Angeles and Oakland. Maybe he’ll drop by a King Taco for good measure.

For months, Hillary Clinton has held a solid lead over Obama in California. Polls show Obama closing the gap—a Rasmussen poll put him within the margin of error. But it’s unclear if he’ll catch up by Feb. 5. Most people are chalking up Clinton’s success to her support among Latinos. She has the backing of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, among other Hispanic leaders; and she’s been courting Latinos, who could make up as much as 25 percent of the state’s Democratic electorate on Super Tuesday, much more aggressively than Obama. (Hispanic sentiment toward Obama seems to be largely based on unfamiliarity.

But with Kennedy on board, Obama is trying to alter the calculus in a week. He may not be able to pull off a win in Hispanic communities. But because of the way delegates are allocated, he doesn’t need to. Micro-electoral guru Ambinder explains why. Briefly, it’s because the state allocates many of its delegates proportionally by district. (California has 53 congressional districts. 241 delegates are given to the winners of the districts. Another 81 delegates go to whoever wins the state.) So say a district has four delegates at stake. Even if a candidate wins sixty percent of the vote in that district, he or she will still receive only two delegates. If there are an odd number of delegates, the most a candidate can win by is one.

So Kennedy doesn’t need to win over every Latino in California for Obama. Just enough to close the gap slightly. That way, as long as Hillary doesn’t rack up a bunch of lopsided wins, the delegate race will be incredibly tight. And given expectations, Obama can live with that.

The Anti-Dynasty

Watching Ted Kennedy share a stage with his niece Caroline, his son Patrick, and Barack Obama, I couldn’t help but think, One of these things is not like the others.

No, not like that. 

The theme of Ted Kennedy’s speech here at American University, and of Caroline Kennedy’s Times op-ed, is that Obama is John F. Kennedy’s political heir. The corollary to that, however, is that the family has no political heir who shares the Kennedy name. Sure, the most prominent living Kennedy children—Caroline, Patrick, Bobby Jr., Joseph P., Kathleen, Maria Shriver—have made major contributions to government and society. But none of them have become leaders on the scale of JFK, RFK, and even Teddy.

Seeing Ted praise Obama, it felt like a father deciding to give the family business to the adopted son rather than his natural son. And that’s the point: For all the talk about Obama inheriting the Kennedy legacy, this is not a dynasty. Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama therefore flies in the face of the dynastic succession of another Clinton presidency. Symbolically, it’s a repudiation of dynasties.

“The year I was born,” Obama said in his speech, “John F. Kennedy passed the torch to his youngest brother.” For Ted Kennedy, the living symbol of American dynasty, who essentially inherited his Massachusetts Senate seat from his brother, to now pass the torch to not only a non-Kennedy but a nonestablishment figure—that’s no small statement.

Family Feud

Also worth noting about the Kennedy endorsements: This is at least the third prominent political family to be publicly split among the presidential candidates.

Jesse Jackson, who himself won the South Carolina primary in 1988, criticized Barack Obama back in September for “acting like he’s white.” He hasn’t endorsed Hillary, but he and the Clintons are longtime allies. Even so, his son, Jesse Jackson Jr. cut an ad for Obama in October encouraging African-Americans to vote for him. “Obama has a heart that beats for our community,” he said.

The Bushes, too, have undergone an election season rift. Jeb Bush Jr., son of the former Florida governor, endorsed Rudy Giuliani in October and has served as chairman of Young Professionals for Rudy in the state. Meanwhile, his brother, George P. Bush, backed Fred Thompson’s prospective campaign back in June, when Thompson was the party’s shining hope. Another George W. Bush nephew, Sam LeBlond, worked for Thompson, then quit in July. Former Gov. Jeb Bush has kept quiet so far, but he’s widely believed to support Mitt Romney. 

Now comes the Kathleen/Kerry/Bobby Jr. vs. Caroline/Teddy feud. Granted, everyone has gone out of their way to “respect” the decision of their relatives. But those summer retreats to Hyannis Port could get a little awkward.

Fired Up, Teddy to Go

Over the weekend, Barack Obama got two Kennedys (Kennedies?) for the price of one.

First, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, penned a gushing op-ed in the New York Times endorsing the senator from Illinois. Then on Sunday, the campaign announced that Sen. Ted Kennedy will be stumping for Obama this week.

Time's Mark Halperin offers some compelling reasons why this endorsement, unlike most, actually matters. (Kennedy commands respect among demographics Obama doesn’t—namely Hispanics, working-class Dems, and union households.)

I’ll add one more: This is a risk for Kennedy. As an all-round eminence gris with a gift for negotiating compromises, he would play a pivotal role in the relationship between a Democratic White House and the Senate. As chairman of the health, education, labor, and pensions committee, he sits at the center of any, well, health-care, education, or labor overhauls undertaken by a potential Clinton administration. Maintaining good relations is in his interest, and neutrality would have been a perfectly acceptable stance. That he rebuffed overtures from Bill Clinton makes the endorsement all the more a repudiation of his wife’s candidacy.

It doesn’t hurt that the endorsement comes after the most decisive primary win so far. Nor that Obama’s speech Saturday night drew JFK comparisons galore. Plus, don’t forget about superdelegates. Bill Clinton has reportedly been working the phones to woo party players who will have votes at the national convention in August. Kennedy no doubt has pull in this area, too. And if it comes down to a brokered convention—that hellish scenario you're secretly hoping for—Obama can use all the help he can get.

Naturally, Clinton's team greeted the news with news (sort of) of their own. On Sunday, the campaign fired off a competing statement from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and daughter of Bobby Kennedy, pointing out her own support for Clinton as well as that of her brother Bobby and her sister Kerry. But if there were a formula to measure respective Kennedy influence, it would probably looking something like:

Bobby Jr. + Kerry + Kathleen + Caroline = Teddy