KENNEDY SHOWS OBAMA AND CLINTON HOW TO CAMPAIGN

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW: We happened to catch CSPAN's broadcast of Ted Kennedy campaigning for Obama at the East LA Community College. In 20 minutes, Kennedy got more good stuff across than Obama and Clinton had done the previous evening in two hours of debate.

Kennedy's secret: he's a real human being and not a policy wonk. When he talked about immigration he described looking out of his Boston office window at the pier where eight of his great grandparents had arrived in American penniless, climbing up the "golden staircase" to East Boston. On the subject of health care, he described the blue card Senators got which allowed them free health care, paid for, he told the crowd by "you." Something to remember when Dick Cheney or other Republicans complain about socialized medicine.

It reminded us of how politics has disintegrated from human theater to mechanistic turgidity. The Clinton-Obama "debate" was one of the most boring things we've seen on TV and Kennedy showed exactly what was missing.