Witnessing the end of the Kennedy era is a little like seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall. The retirement of self-destructive Kennedy scion, Patrick Kennedy, will now mean that for the first time in a long time, there will be not a Kennedy in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. Patrick Kennedy, may have retired to dodge some larger scandal, though considering the scandals he has already been involved in, it's hard to imagine what else there might be. Or he might simply be trying to protect his "legacy" by leaving before the voters kick him out.
One notable way Democrats have been dealing with the problem of incumbency unpopularity in the midterm elections is by purging some of their own incumbents behind the scenes by encouraging them to retire, rather than face a party endorsed challengers. While the DNC or Rahm Emanuel can't be blamed for "retiring" Murtha, some of the retirements of incredibly unpopular figures like Senator Dodd or Patrick Kennedy, might well have gotten their start with a Dem night of the long knives that may just be getting started.
But the end of the Democratic party's titled aristocracy, the Kennedy clan (not counting Ahrnold, a Kennedy by marriage, currently misruling over Khalifornia) is an occasion for celebration.
But maybe the party thinks it no longer needs the Kennedy brand, now that it has the Obama brand. A miscalculation considering the declining value of Obamamania (TM). If Biden and Gibbs have gotten desperate enough to try claiming credit for success in Iraq, then the stench of failure is really in the air.
None of this however should make Republicans feel too complacent. A public shift means that there will suddenly be a lot more public scrutiny aimed at the GOP, which has been safely ignored for over a year. Once people start taking Republican politicians seriously, the media will be primed to search and expose any scandal or weakness. We already saw how this went with the last fall of the Republican congress. And that means putting our own house in order first.
Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.
