: MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - (AP) Barack Obama is being endorsed by fellow Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee who lost to George W. Bush that year and gave up his own plans for a 2008 run a year ago.
Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, planned to announce his support Thursday at 11 a.m. EST at a rally at the College of Charleston, said a Democrat familiar with Kerry's decision. The 2004 nominee was to argue that Obama can best unite the country and has the potential to create transformational change, the person said.
Kerry lost the South Carolina Democratic primary in 2004 to John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who now is running third in the 2008 campaign behind Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama.
Besides any potential help for Obama, Thursday's endorsement was a slap at Edwards, who was Kerry's running mate in the last election. The two had their differences during the campaign over strategy and spending. In post-mortem interviews, Edwards said he would have been more aggressive in challenging the unsubstantiated allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Vietnam War veterans who questioned Kerry's military record.
Kerry's endorsement also was a jab at Clinton, the New York Democrat who won the New Hampshire primary after a loss to Obama in the Iowa caucuses.
Kerry had withheld his endorsement, hoping to have an impact on the race and avoid the fate of fellow Democrat Al Gore, the 2000 nominee who endorsed Howard Dean in 2004 shortly before the former Vermont governor's campaign imploded. Gore has made no endorsement so far this year.
While Kerry has been close to Clinton's husband, the former president, he was incensed in 2006 when she chided him after Kerry suggested that people who don't go to school "get stuck in Iraq." Aides said Kerry meant to jab at Bush and say "get us stuck in Iraq," and that he didn't appreciate Clinton piling onto the criticism he was already getting for the remark.
Kerry himself had considered running for president in 2008, but that plan fizzled with the botched remark. For many Democrats, his words revived bitter memories of his missteps in 2004, when he lost to Bush.
As for Obama, Kerry gave the young Illinois state senator his first turn in the national spotlight when he chose him to deliver the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Later that year, Obama won election as a U.S. senator.
Since announcing a year ago he would not make the run, Kerry has prodded Democrats to take a stronger anti-war stance, pushing for troop withdrawal deadlines. In another area, he has backed environmental causes, writing a book with his wife on the issue.
Kerry should be able to provide some organizational muscle to Obama.
Since losing the 2004 race, Kerry has kept a national network of supporters intact. He has an e-mail network of 3 million supporters, according to aides. He also has traveled extensively raising millions of dollars for Democratic candidates nationwide.
@JMD580 You must really think that all black people cannot research or read, am sure you are working for the REPUBLICAN PARTY which most of them think that black people are so lazy to read, well you can kill that myth today moron!! cos it is not true. You might wanna take a look at BUSH and CHENEY cos they are the world most dangerous extremists. Your vice president was one of the people that labelled ANC (AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS)Nelson Mendela's party during the aparthied terrorist because they were fighting white people that were enslaving them in their own country. Now go back to your sender and tell him that black people can actually read and educated as well. I am sure you are like, ***!!! they are ready!! oh yeah buddy, we are ready.
I think Obama is amazing. He is in the trenches not out there running his mouth. The man is a doer not a sayer. People, PLEASE READ HIS BOOK (I can't recall the title right now, but it's about his formative years in Hawaii - that book was VERY INTERESTING!!!
There are a number of web site trying to downplay Obama, trying to cause a stir. It's time for a CHANGE & he is the man for the job. It's not about the color of his skin, even though that's great too.
Since we can't comment on the "lynch tiger comment," I want to share an encyclopedia article for you. Doesn't anyone think it is kind of ironic how 'nooses' and all these comments of lynching (or aborting black babies to reduce crime) is unfolding in the past years. There might be a reason why.
Lynching: Lynching, hanging or other types of executions, in punishment of a presumed criminal offense, carried out by self-appointed commissions or mobs, without due process of law. The term lynching is generally believed to be derived from the name of a Virginia justice of the peace, Charles Lynch, who ordered extralegal punishment for Tory acts during the American Revolution (1775-1783). Frontier settlements in the United States often lacked established law enforcement agencies and, instead, exercised summary justice through vigilantes. Western pioneers punished murder, rape, horse thievery, and other capital crimes by resorting to lynching.
Even before the American Civil War (1861-1865), many lynchings took place in Southern states. The violence was usually directed at members of the abolitionist movement or others who worked to end the system of slavery. After the war lynching became a method of terrorism against black people in the South. During the period of Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan used lynching to intimidate freed blacks who were voting and assuming political power in many parts of the South. A comprehensive study of vigilante violence estimated that the Klan carried out more than 400 lynchings in the South during the period from 1868 to 1871. Often blacks were lynched because they were presumed to have committed crimes against white people. Investigations by journalist Ida B. Wells showed that in many cases the crimes were exaggerated or did not occur at all. Starting in 1882, when records of lynchings began to be kept, most lynchings occurred in Southern states; after 1886 the number of black victims annually exceeded the number of white victims. Georgia and Mississippi had the largest totals of lynchings; the six New England states had none. From 1882 to 1968 more than 4,700 persons were lynched in the United States, and the majority of them were black. The largest number of lynchings in any one year was 230 in 1892. After World War I (1914-1918), lynching declined considerably. In the 1960s, however, several persons attempting to secure civil rights for blacks in the South met death through the actions of lynch mobs.
In 2005 the United States Senate formally apologized to lynching victims and their descendants for the Senate’s failure to pass antilynching legislation during the 19th and 20th centuries. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat of Louisiana, was the main sponsor of the legislation.
Question for the peanut gallery: So with Obama running for President in 2008, it is just a coincidence that more nooses and comments about lynching are coming to fruition?
**** ALERT ******
Im sorry ive been reading these blogs on OBAMA , and i must comment for those not informed outthere.
IF YOU ARE THAT STUPID NOT TO FIGURE OUT OBAMA IS THE "ANTI-CHRIST" You need to do alot more reading .
Are you that stupid you dont know that JOHN KERRY and G W BUSH are secret buddies , you are pretty stupid as far as politically wise .
NOw you telling me John Kerry is supporting OBAMA . MTO is so mis informed .
Also If you didnt know Obama is Muslim , then you are mis informed . He will tell you himself if you ask him .As far as the above article about indonesia and all that stuff. Wether The fact that will affect his presidential term and how he runs it. I wouldnt care if a muslim or christian was president. The fact that BUSHz kronies are secretly supporting him is what I have an Issue with .
The fact Bush and Karl Rove are trying their hardest to Destroy Hillary should be enough proof . That should ring a bell in your head (for the smart informed minority)
Dude look at who Obama has in his group of people . There all Bushz kronies.
Do ya research and you will find or make sense of what Im saying .
Ask 50 or Illseed theyll tell you
MADDNERD
You know it's not a coinicidence that Sen Kerry and Bush are cousins just like Sen Obama and Vice Pres are cousin. They playing ya'll like dummies. Bush and Kerry are apart of skulls and bones and kerry has a pic with the founder of the church of Satan anton lavey. Last yr kerry watch a Florida student get tasered and didn't do anything,because the student asked him about his secret society skulls and bones. Wake up people!
precisely-done please keep these mofoe's in place. This jack *** is definitely a Clinton supporter to the fullest. He/She needs to tell that crying *** Hillary that we don't need no punk *** trying to run our country. Is she gonna *** cry every time we go to war or have a crisis? *** Hillary because Obama will be president of the US in 08' better believe it !!!!
@SMUJ...I couldn't agree with you more. JMD580 is an ignorant azz Clinton supporter doing a *** azz job at trying to undermine Barack Obama. And to all you other ignorant azz people on here posting that Barack is the "Anti-Christ" apparently you haven't done the so called research you are challenging everyone else to do. Black people are the only race that will stop at nothing to bring each other down. Here we have a highly intelligent more than capable man who happens to be Black running for President and its his own people that are grasping at straws to keep him out of the office. If you think that he is the Anti-Christ that's your business.....we've taken a chance on one Anti-Christ twice; so what the hell I will take another one. As the saying goes the 3rd time is the charm.
Thats a good look for Obama!! Kerry and Edwards must have had some type of falling out. I wished these white folks stop lying on Obama!!! They are trying to use fear to persuade others not to vote for Obama. Maybe he was raised Muslim as a child, but he can't help that his parent's we're Muslim. He's a Christain now,I do not believe that he is a Muslim!!!! Stop hatin and lying on that man!!!
Some of the things said on this post are the most ignorant tales I've ever heard. Obama has never pulled the race/gender card; this is why he is so appealing to voters of all ages, race, gender, and background. Hillary, on the other hand, first pulled out the 'man against women card', then she figured if she pretended to cry, she would appeal to women voters. She even had two guys with an 'iron my ***' poster on one of her rallies. Like her staff and supporters didn't see those guys, but let them in anyways. Then, she had the nerve to say that speeches along do not mean anything. She went on by saying to fox news the following: Reporter: quoting OBAMA. "False Hopes. Dr King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over the magnificent crowd, the reflecting pool, the Washington Memorial, sorry guys, false hopes, the dream will die, it can't be done, false hopes, we don't need leaders who tell us what we can't do, we need leaders to tell us what we can do and inspire us."
Reporter: Would you react to that?
Senator Clinton: "I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples eyes because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished." . Last year CNN reported the following 'Sen. Hillary Clinton drew criticism for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech in which she told a mostly black audience at a Harlem church that Republican leaders have run the House "like a plantation" and the Bush administration will go down as "one of the worst" in U.S. history.' Come on people. She is so calculating and cold. I am a woman and I am here to tell you that this has nothing to do with supporting Obama or any other candidate, but everything to do with Hillary's attitude. now her campain staff are saying that latinos voters are more than likely not to vote for a black man for president....what kind of *** is that. why are we looking at this in terms of black vs white/ men vs women. How about each candidate concentrates of telling the voters their plans to help America and why we should vote for them, rather than, trying to speak badly of others on the rece for the white house? we sometimes get so caught up with the Bullsh*t politics that we tend to forget we are voting for the next president of the United States of America, not the next American Idol. Give me a break! YOU TELL ME WHO IS USING THE GENDER/RACE CARD HERE????
