The End of Camelot

Only WSWS could write an obituary which looks at the larger picture. In writing about Ted Kennedy's life and career, the author ties in his and his family's lives in with the decay of liberalism and the Democratic Party as a whole:

The American political establishment as a whole had shifted far to the right, as embodied in the free market nostrums of Reagan. These provided the political justification for a relentless assault on the living standards and social position of the working class, which continued under the Clinton and Bush administrations and continues today under Obama.

In death, Kennedy is being eulogized as the “Lion of the Senate” —a master legislator and advocate for the common man. While the personal tragedies of the Kennedys evoke in the public a certain sympathy for Ted Kennedy, the fact remains that his name is not associated with a single serious social reform. He spent his final decade sponsoring bipartisan measures of a right-wing character, such as George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act”—an attack on public education—and a punitive bill targeting undocumented immigrants that failed to win passage in Congress.

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There will be three days of rites before Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery near brothers Jack and Bobby.

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