Ted Kennedy himself never ran in a competitive race. He was a shoe-in every time, from his first race for Senate in 1962 until his final election in 2006.
In 1962, Ted Kennedy (b.1932) won, 55-42, his first race for Senate in a special election, against a Protestant who, with a the George Cabot Lodge II (b.1927), was emblematic of pre-"El…
Ted Kennedy himself never ran in a competitive race. He was a shoe-in every time, from his first race for Senate in 1962 until his final election in 2006.
In 1962, Ted Kennedy (b.1932) won, 55-42, his first race for Senate in a special election, against a Protestant who, with a the George Cabot Lodge II (b.1927), was emblematic of pre-"Ellis Island era" New England and the USA itself.
The only reason that the seat was available and that Ted Kennedy was seen as a realistic option was: his brother, John F. Kennedy, had won the seat in 1952 and held it until assuming the presidency on Jan 20, 1961, and the Kennedy family had effective control of the seat, making it a strange sort of ethnopolitical "rotten borough," not a good legacy of ethnic politics.
Ted Kennedy was re-elected nine times and held the seat near half a century. Their "dynasty" itself needed no help from Diversity Visas. Ted Kennedy's backing for open immigration between the 1960s and the 2000s was political atavism.
The 2020s revival of a "Kennedy" in high-level U.S. politics has been a little strange. The critics of RFK Jr. (who was an eight-year-old boy when uncle Ted was elected to the U.S. Senate) say he's trading on a name but at-least-nominally unqualified to be talking about the specific things he's talking about. This was also, I suppose, true of Ted Kennedy from the start.
We can place Ted Kennedy squarely in a box of anti-WASP or anti-Protestant ethnic-politician of the Ellis Island type, the usual traits recombined into late-20th-century forms. With RFK Jr. -- who, in his twenties had fit the "deadbeat scion of an elite family" mold -- it's more like he (RFK Jr.) is a social-media star or the like. RFK Jr. is not so far off from Donald Trump in terms of how he "got famous."
Yes, I think a case can be made that both Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are other-side-of-the-coin examples of the Failure To Produce Good Elites phenomenon that some focus on as being the province of the Left, but may actually be more a general-sociological phenomenon. Ted Kennedy was a bad elite for reasons we can at least understand; RFK Jr. is (in this line-of-argument) a bad elite we can't as easily understand.
"During debate on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the Act, said, "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
If Ted Kennedy in the 1960s held dear the value he seemed to be championing -- I refer to "the ethnic mix of [the USA] will not be upset" -- why didn't he come out for immigration-restrictionism at some point, by the 1990s or 2000s in his later career? (At times there were real moments of opportunity for a restricionist success.)
I think I know the answer, and it's not that he was "lying" in 1965, necessarily. IMO, it's the politically atavistic instinct I described in the earlier comment.
Ted Kennedy himself never ran in a competitive race. He was a shoe-in every time, from his first race for Senate in 1962 until his final election in 2006.
In 1962, Ted Kennedy (b.1932) won, 55-42, his first race for Senate in a special election, against a Protestant who, with a the George Cabot Lodge II (b.1927), was emblematic of pre-"Ellis Island era" New England and the USA itself.
The only reason that the seat was available and that Ted Kennedy was seen as a realistic option was: his brother, John F. Kennedy, had won the seat in 1952 and held it until assuming the presidency on Jan 20, 1961, and the Kennedy family had effective control of the seat, making it a strange sort of ethnopolitical "rotten borough," not a good legacy of ethnic politics.
Ted Kennedy was re-elected nine times and held the seat near half a century. Their "dynasty" itself needed no help from Diversity Visas. Ted Kennedy's backing for open immigration between the 1960s and the 2000s was political atavism.
The 2020s revival of a "Kennedy" in high-level U.S. politics has been a little strange. The critics of RFK Jr. (who was an eight-year-old boy when uncle Ted was elected to the U.S. Senate) say he's trading on a name but at-least-nominally unqualified to be talking about the specific things he's talking about. This was also, I suppose, true of Ted Kennedy from the start.
We can place Ted Kennedy squarely in a box of anti-WASP or anti-Protestant ethnic-politician of the Ellis Island type, the usual traits recombined into late-20th-century forms. With RFK Jr. -- who, in his twenties had fit the "deadbeat scion of an elite family" mold -- it's more like he (RFK Jr.) is a social-media star or the like. RFK Jr. is not so far off from Donald Trump in terms of how he "got famous."
Yes, I think a case can be made that both Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are other-side-of-the-coin examples of the Failure To Produce Good Elites phenomenon that some focus on as being the province of the Left, but may actually be more a general-sociological phenomenon. Ted Kennedy was a bad elite for reasons we can at least understand; RFK Jr. is (in this line-of-argument) a bad elite we can't as easily understand.
"During debate on the Senate floor, Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking of the effects of the Act, said, "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. ... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
If Ted Kennedy in the 1960s held dear the value he seemed to be championing -- I refer to "the ethnic mix of [the USA] will not be upset" -- why didn't he come out for immigration-restrictionism at some point, by the 1990s or 2000s in his later career? (At times there were real moments of opportunity for a restricionist success.)
I think I know the answer, and it's not that he was "lying" in 1965, necessarily. IMO, it's the politically atavistic instinct I described in the earlier comment.
Agreed on all points. I just pulled that quote out because it seemed apropos to the discussion of old Teddy and immigration