Projo Politics Blog

AP photo
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., works the crowd with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., at the rally today after he was endorsed by the three Kennedy clan members.

Video: Watch a clip of Sen. Kennedy endorsing Obama, and his response.

WASHINGTON -- More than 40 years after the late President John F. Kennedy became associated with championing civil rights, three Kennedys today endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Veteran Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy called the Illinois senator someone with "extraordinary gifts of leadership and character."

"I feel change in the air!" Kennedy bellowed during a rally at American University in Washington in which he made references to the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

He said Obama has what it takes to "make America good again, from sea to shining sea."

From the beginning, Kennedy said, Obama opposed the Iraq war. While he could have chosen a career in corporate law, he chose to serve the community in public life.

With an Obama campaign poster prominently featuring the word "change" behind them, the elder Kennedy, his son, Rhode Island Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, and Caroline Kennedy -- daughter of President Kennedy -- lent the support of their political dynasty to Obama over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- both dueling for the party's presidential nomination.

Rep. Kennedy, who spoke first, recalled words of his uncle, John F. Kennedy, whose life -- like King's -- was cut short by an assassin's bullet:

" 'Change is the law of life and those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future.' "

"We need to embrace change," Patrick Kennedy said, adding that he was there to declare his "complete support for a new generation of leadership," for someone who "dares to dream, who dares to hope."

The endorsements come as Obama enters the week following his trouncing of Clinton in Saturday's South Carolina primary.

Get more on the rally from the Associated Press ...

Extra: This weekend, Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama, in a New York Times op-ed, "A President Like My Father"

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

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