First Posted: 08-26-09 09:24 AM | Updated: 08-26-09 10:54 AM
Edward Kennedy, last of the Kennedy brothers and one of his generation’s foremost champions of the less fortunate, died last night with the “cause of his life” — universal health coverage — just out of his reach.
As he wrote in Newsweek just last month: “For four decades I have carried this cause–from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me–and more urgency–than ever before. But it’s always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.”
Nobody knows how the final vote will turn out in the Senate, where Republicans have so far put up a solid front of opposition, and conservative Democrats are dragging their feet on passage of the kind of far-reaching legislation Kennedy so ardently desired.
Kennedy’s vote had been considered as a critical one. But those hoping for a dramatic moment, like the one that took place last year, will no longer get their wish Source
