And then Jimmy decided

to whack his own gang… (From “Goodfellas”)

From the NYT.

January 28, 2008
Kennedy Chooses Obama, Spurning Bill Clinton Plea
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Senator Edward M. Kennedy, rejecting entreaties from the Clintons and their supporters, is set to endorse Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid on Monday as part of an effort to lend Kennedy charisma and connections before the 22-state Feb. 5 showdown for the Democratic nomination.

Both the Clintons and their allies had pressed Mr. Kennedy for weeks to remain neutral in the Democratic race, but Mr. Kennedy had become increasingly disenchanted with the tone of the Clinton campaign, aides said. He and former President Bill Clinton had a heated telephone exchange earlier this month over what Mr. Kennedy considered misleading statements by Mr. Clinton about Mr. Obama, as well as his injection of race into the campaign.

Mr. Kennedy called Mr. Clinton Sunday to tell him of his decision.

The endorsement, which followed a public appeal on Mr. Obama’s behalf by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, was a blow to the Clinton campaign and pits leading members of the nation’s most prominent Democratic families against one another.

Mr. Kennedy, a major figure in party politics for more than 40 years, intends to campaign aggressively for Mr. Obama, beginning with an appearance and rally with him in Washington on Monday. He will be introduced by Ms. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy then heads west with Mr. Obama, followed by appearances in the Northeast. Strategists see him bolstering Mr. Obama’s credibility and helping him firm up support from unions and Hispanics, as well as the party base.

The endorsement appears to support assertions that Mr. Clinton’s campaigning on behalf of his wife in South Carolina has in some ways hurt her candidacy.
…

Anybody that revels in the fact that politics is this way is a sociopath; do not let them play with your children.

But anybody that pretends that it isn’t this way is a child playing in traffic thinking that Happy Jesus Thoughts will protect them from the 18-wheeler bearing down on them.

Or as Pericles put it 2,500 years ago and better than I ever could: "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

So for all the righteous passion and fury of the last few months, sometimes it is easy to forget that this primary season is working just exactly the way it is supposed to work.

It is not pretty. Not fair. Not for the faint of heart, the politically virginal who can only give it up to the perfect man or woman, the single issue purist, the impatient or the easily discouraged.

Anyone – anyone -- who steps into the arena with the GOP this Fall had damned well better be sweated down to their fighting weight, born again hard and stripped for action. To win, they and their running mate will have to pop from the first bell and rain hell down on the Republican Party and its nominee.

And I don't know about you, but I want to win.

Anybody wants this nomination has to fight for it. They can do it with a velvety tone, or message of peace, or a jaunty grin, or a voice that sound like kittens’ claws being dragged across a hundred miles of slate, but they have to do it.

Which leaves us all doing the hardest thing, which is also the necessary thing. We must root passionately for who we love, who we admire, who we think can win or who we just know people would come to adore like we do of only they would pay them just a little more attention.

We must fight for them.

Fight like a motherfucker, sincerely and with all of our hearts…

…all while knowing -- in a coolly pragmatic little cellar in our soul -– that our heart will be broken. That if our Beloved wins, in no time their feet of clay will be tracking political muck all over our nice, clean Liberal carpet. And that if our Beloved loses -- if they cannot survive real punches being throw and real mud being slung in the prelims -- they probably have no business stepping into arena for the main event.

Because with the globe in genuine peril, Dubya's six-week Cakewalk War about to enter its sixth year, the nation plunging into the shitter, our Constitution begging for help and the Supreme Court one bad cold or slippery patch of pavement away from a bulletproof wingnut majority for the next 20 years, I for one am all finished with losing nobly and consoling myself that at least I kept my political hymen pure and intact.