Yes, he was a liberal’s liberal, both good and bad, but any senator who said the vote they were most proud of was their vote against the Iraq War deserves a hearty “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”
What must not go unmentioned therefore is the history behind this. Ted always seemed to have more of his father in him than any of his brothers – and undoubtedly he was haunted to no end by seeing in Dubya’s zeal to avenge his father’s wimpiness an echo of how nearly Jack brought about nuclear armageddon with his eagerness to destroy the legacy of their father, the architect of Munich.
So in the midst of the coming avalanche of Chris Matthews’ barely disguised homoerotic asphyxiation on the Kennedys, let us pause and pay homage to the Kennedys who dared say no to war.
Thomas O. Meehan 
Jack Ross 
Michael Hardesty 
S.L. Toddard 
Geoff Balaigh 
Patrick 
Ted Kennedy has gone, as we will all go eventually. Requiescat in pace. Jesu mercy, Mary pray.
Meanwhile, in filling his seat, the Democratic Party has an opportunity. They have to send to the Senate a uncompromising supporter of the Kennedy Bill (as the healthcare bill could reasonably now be renamed), and of Kennedy’s economic views generally. How could they not? They have a base to please.
But the new Senator should also a figure capable of reaching out to those who, on the same day as they elected both President Obama and a Democratic Congress, made it clear at those same polls that, in Florida and California, they wanted back the country where marriage only ever meant one man and one woman. That, in Colorado, they wanted back the country that did not permit legal discrimination against working-class white men. That, in Missouri and Ohio, they wanted to preserve the country where gambling was not deregulated. And that, from coast to coast, they wanted that country as stalwarts of, especially, the black and Catholic churches.
That opportunity was missed in black and Catholic Illinois and New York, and in Catholic Delaware. Let it not also be missed in Catholic Massachusetts. Not that the new Senator actually has to be either black or a Catholic. But he or she does need to be, in addition to a fully-signed up supporter of Kennedy’s economic views in general and of the Kennedy Bill in particular, a fully-signed up believer (as is President Obama) that marriage is only ever the union of one man and one woman, opponent of discrimination against working-class white men, opponent of deregulated gambling, believer in the public role of the churches, and supporter of Bob Casey’s Pregnant Women Support Act (effectively endorsed by the President at Notre Dame).
And anti-war, of course.