Though he died in August, Sen. Ted Kennedy remained the Democrats' spiritual floor leader for today's Senate health care reform vote, Dana Millbank observes.
"More than anything, it was his memory, and his final exhortation, that allowed the Senate Democrats to overcome considerable differences between moderates and liberals in drafting a compromise. President Obama, in his address to Congress in September, read from a letter Kennedy had written as he neared death, saying he was 'confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the president who at long last signs into law the health-care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society.'"
"One after the other, Senate colleagues invoked his name in a manner more often associated with his slain brothers."