How Will Ted Kennedy's Illness Affect the Election?

Jim Geraghty has some thoughts:

1) Obama was set to clinch the majority of the delegates tonight; if he achieves that, it's now bumped to the inside pages. Kennedy's tumor is just much, much bigger news.

2) A reader notes that presuming Obama is the nominee, if Kennedy is well enough to address the Democratic convention in Denver in August, it is easy to picture him delivering one of the most heartbreaking addresses in American history. The man who gave one of the most quoted concession speeches in American history — "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die" — has a chance to rhetorically mark "the passing of the torch" to Obama.

UPDATE: A reader wonders about another possible side effect — greater public concern about the long-term health of senators in their 70s?

There's no guarantee Ted will still be around by November since the prognosis on this type of cancer is uncertain at best. I had a former pastor who was discovered to have something like this in February and was gone by September.

Playing the most morbid possibility, should Kennedy expire prior to election day, you just know there would be a sympathy vote to honor the senator by voting for "his guy", and should there be a big public memorial service (and you know there will be), we could see a repeat of the Wellstone Memorial from 2002 with speaker after speaker imploring voters to support Obama - "Do it for Ted!".

Democrats certainly aren't above walking over the bodies of their dead heroes to win elections.