January 29, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 19, 1429

WASHINGTON, Jan 28: Two US political dynasties are going to head-to-head in the tight 2008 White House race as some of the iconic Kennedy clan snub the Clintons to back the new-boy-on-the-block, Barack Obama.

Influential Senator Ted Kennedy, the last surviving brother of assassinated president John F. Kennedy and late presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy, was Monday due to endorse Obama’s bid for the Democrats’ presidential nomination.

The veteran lawmaker was to make his announcement at a rally at Washington’s American University, accompanied by his niece Caroline, daughter of the late JFK and his last living child.

Caroline Kennedy has already backed Obama in a New York Times article on Sunday entitled: “A President Like my Father.” “Sometimes it takes a while to recognise that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves ... and imagine that together we can do great things,” Kennedy wrote.

“We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama,” wrote Kennedy, who was five when her father was shot dead in 1963.

The endorsements of two key members of the Kennedy family, still revered in Democratic circles here, are a blow to New York Senator Hillary Clinton as she bids to return to the White House, but as president rather than first lady.

The timing is also crucial, coming just after Obama swept Saturday’s South Carolina primaries with 55 per cent of the vote to Clinton’s 26 per cent, ahead of “Super Tuesday” on Feb 5 when 22 states will vote.

More than half of the delegates to the Democratic Party’s national convention which will endorse a candidate to stand in the November presidential elections will be chosen on Feb 5.

According to the most recent polls, Clinton leads Obama in key states such as California, New Jersey and Massachusetts, while the 46-year-old Illinois senator is ahead in his home state and in Georgia.

But Kennedy’s support and Obama’s triumph in South Carolina could alter the map.

With backing from Kennedy, who is a senator for Massachusetts, and former presidential hopeful John Kerry — the state’s other senator — Obama hopes to capture most of the state’s 121 delegates.

The latest State House poll in Massachusetts of likely Democratic voters earlier this month had Clinton leading Obama by 37 to 25 per cent with John Edwards on 14 per cent and crucially 11 per cent of voters undecided.

Obama’s campaign advisors say Kennedy plans to stump actively for the young Illinois senator, and spokesman Robert Gibbs said the two would also be in California by the end of the week.

But sources in the Clinton campaign said they doubted that any one endorsement at this stage of the campaign would actually change many votes.

“We feel very good about where we are in Massachusetts, we don’t think that it will be hugely significant at this point,” one top campaign aide said.

The Kennedy family’s influence could however help attract key donors, a lifeline for Obama’s campaign as it goes national.

Ted Kennedy also holds sway over the labour union vote and has huge influence with Hispanic voters, who so far have eschewed Obama in favour of Clinton.

In another blow, Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison, who in 1998 called Bill Clinton “the first black president,” came out for Obama on Monday in a letter praising the Illinois senator’s “wisdom.”—AFP