The Kennedy Lift

Yesterday we focused on the negative: neither Ted Kennedy nor John Kerry nor Deval Patrick was able to help Barack Obama to a win in the Massachusetts primary. However, Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias slowed the rush to proclaim Kennedy's irrelevance with a helpful chart:

It's obvious there (and it was obvious here and here) that Obama had a lot of momentum heading into the voting--though it's impossible to say exactly how much of that was related to the high-level endorsements. As Yglesias wrote, "If he'd had another two weeks to campaign, maybe he would have closed the gap." That's seems right, and should be something of a moral victory for Obama's Bay State backers.

But one of the key facts about Tuesday's primary was that it was held on Tuesday. Regardless of how quickly he was rising, it wasn't enough.

Also, it's ancient history in the realm of internet time, but remember when the Atlantic was a Boston magazine? Those were the days.