To those who compare Obama with RFK...

[Ken Burch]

Barack Obama would be a great president.

But he's not comparable to Bobby yet.

Bobby's campaign was about truth and risk. It was about courting temporary unpopularity to speak the large and ultimate winning truths!

It was about making the country face the real burning issues of race and class that tear us apart now as they did then.

It was about changing how we are seen in the world by changing how we act towards the world.

If Barack's going to be this year's Bobby(minus the ending, obviously)he needs to be more about risk and about reality.

If he can get there, he can win.

P.S. This thread is about encouraging the man to grow and helping him win. I'm not hatin'. ok?

[DURHAM D]

1. Three of Robert Kennedy's children have endorsed Hillary.

They put out a letter earlier this week in which they indicated that while Ted and Caroline see Jack Kennedy's legacy in Obama, they see their father's legacy in Hillary Clinton.

[Ken Burch]

9. Which puzzles me. I can't see how implementing Rush Limbaugh's wet dream of a welfare bill

could possibly be consistent with Bobby's passion for helping the powerless.

Yes, welfare needed to be changed(as the left AND the poor had been saying for a quarter of a century or more by then)but the answer was not leaving the poor undefended against hard times and against right wing lies about their "immorality" and "laziness". This party never needed a president who would give in that cravenly to a hate campaign against the poor. Bobby would've been outraged by that bill. He knew the answer was jobs programs and REAL job training, AND rebuilding depressed areas, not in "class cleansing", where whole neighborhoods were driven out of their homes to make way for soulless yuppie scum and their boutiques.

[Benhurst]

2. It would be great if he did. I supported him when he ran for the

Senate from my native state. I've been disappointed in his record so far and have not been impressed by his cotton-candy rhetoric; but still hold out some hope.

[book_worm]

3. well JFK's brother and his daughter compared him to JFK

so I'll accept that.

[maximusveritas]

4. I think more people compare him to JFK

RFK is a better comparison for Edwards.

[K Gardner]

5. I think this is truly in the eye and soul of the beholder. I don't "compare" Obama to RFK or JFK, bu

but when I hear him speak and see the crowds and feel the great hope that is rising in America now, I feel the same way I did back in the 1960s.. when hope lived in me for our country and our future. I don't really care what anybody calls that feeling; i.e., ridiculous, shallow, false hope, etc., it is real and tangible to those of us who feel it :-)

[ErnestoG]

6. Thank you for posting positive criticism of Obama

instead of the usual drivel from the Hillary mob that wants to dissemble his every move.

It was refreshing.

[Ken Burch]

7. Well, I've never been in the "Hillary mob".

What I've put out in this thread was more the idea of "stretch goals". I'm glad you took it in the spirit in which it was offered.

[grantcart]

8. I don't think any of these people should be compared against each other

but I would make one comment and that is he has taken as a lot of risks.

1) He turned down the big bucks and big resume to do community organizing in Chicago (and he didn't have a lot of family money)

2) He stood up against the war when 90% were for it.

3) He was willing to run against the machine of an incumbent democratic president.

(actually does sound a little like Bobby)

[sallyseven]

12. Resume padding. He is not like RFK

He is not like JFK. He is a motivational speaker like Pat Robinson and the rest of the right wing nut cakes. Listen with your ears.

[synesthesia]

10. hrmm

I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but I can't resist. It's sad RFK died, and he was a good man, but.....................

the truth of the matter was, 1968 RFK was like 2008 John Edwards.

The 'original' RFK was pretty much a conservative 'cold warrior', hawk, totally different. He always was into civil rights even as AG, but overall, he was tough.

He saw an opportunity later on, a vacuum, and rebranded himself as the great leftist hope, out of thin air in order to position himself for the nomination. Good man, but really, if Obama was shot today, in 40 years, people would be talking about how he was Jesus himself.

I really don't see why Obama can't be RFK, or anyone else for that matter, they inspired people. Hell, Obama hasn't even re-invented himself yet.


*sorry guys, had to say it*

[Ken Burch]

11. I won't flame you, but it was a bit more than "rebranding" in Bobby's case

What you're forgetting is that the shooting of his brother totally transformed Bobby. It made him see the world differently and shook up his old Cold War/pre-Vatican 2 Catholic certainties. The quote from Aeschylus that's on Bobby's grave is the key:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

It was the pain of JFK's death that drove Bobby to meet with Chicano farmworkers and support their right to organize, to go to Appalachia, to visit Chilean coal miners working under dangerous conditions(Bobby was told beforehand that these miners were Communists. After he saw where they worked, he said "If I worked in this mine, I'd be a Communist too") to visit starving African American sharecroppers in Mississippi and hold a dying child in his hands trying to get it to respond. It was the pain that made Bobby grow. It wasn't "rebranding". It wasn't a con. The man actually did GET it.

I know it's hard for anyone to believe in this age, when it seems that no one in public life has any core convictions about anything, but trust me, the man really DID change. And that's why they killed him. If Bobby really had been nothing but a cynical "ruthless" hack, he'd have been left alone and would probably be alive today.

Study those times, study the human condition. The limits we've been told to accept about ourselves today don't HAVE to be absolute.