The late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan threw his considerable political weight behind Hillary Clinton, helping her win her Senate seat from a state where she had never lived, but that hasn't deterred his widow from backing Hillary's rival Barack Obama for 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
In a statement e-mailed to David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, Elizabeth B. Moynihan attributed her support for Obama to Caroline Kennedy Schlosberg's Times Op-Ed article where JFK's daughter endorsed Barack Obama, as well as her own displeasure with Bill and Hillary Clinton's recent hostility toward Obama’s candidacy.
Mrs. Moynihan wrote that her husband, who died in 2003, “would have become excited, as I have, to see Barack Obama rekindle hope in our young as he encourages them to participate in the political process, and I know Pat would approve, applaud and encourage me to join Caroline Kennedy in supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. It is a rare gift to be able to inspire people to share a vision that requires commitment and dedication.
“The hope that John Kennedy characterized for Americans spread across the world, then faded with his death,” Mrs. Moynihan wrote. “I believe Obama, like Kennedy, has the gift to transcend obstacles and to inspire Americans to bring out the best in themselves. I firmly believe the election of Barack Obama would help restore hope and America’s image in the world.”
Her opposition to Hillary comes as no great surprise. In his best selling book "The Truth About Hillary" Ed Klein wrote that neither Senator Moynihan nor his wife liked Mrs. Clinton.
Moreover, the Times recalls that in his biography of Senator Moynihan “The Gentleman From New York,” Godfrey Hodgson wrote: “Privately, the senator’s wife had not hidden her impression that Hillary Clinton ‘didn’t get it,’ meaning that she didn’t understand how either the Senate or the senator worked.”
“I’ve never made a circus for Pat, and I’m not going to make a circus for her,” he quoted Mrs. Moynihan as saying, alluding to the fact that her husband formally announced his support of Hillary from his upstate New York farm.
The New York Post has also endorsed Obama, writing that he “represents a fresh start” while Mrs. Clinton “and her husband, stand for déjà vu all over again, a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency.”
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