June 5

Today, the news is filled with stories that Hillary Clinton is expected to suspend her campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Though the last few days have made it clear that she would not win the nomination, it's still an important moment. In fact, 2008 has been rich in historical moments, as the nation watched two path-breaking candidates for the presidency in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Either one of them could have secured the nomination and been assured reams of press coverage about the change they represented. I can't help but think how fitting it is that it happens now, at this moment in historical time.

Forty years ago today Robert F. Kennedy won the California primary, thus strengthening his bid for the 1968 Democratic nomination for the presidency. And that evening RFK was assassinated. I can't help but think that so many things might have been different for our nation had things gone differently on that day.

I wasn't even one year old when RFK died, so none of my personal political memories are about him. But in 1988, when I was a junior in college, I wrote a paper on poverty in America. Research for that paper taught me a lot about RFK. I was particularly engaged by his poverty tour of America and his visits to places near where I had grown up. I've been a fan ever since.

At RFK's funeral, Senator Edward Kennedy spoke of his brother and said of him, "My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." It's a set of very simple ideas and yet they have lingered in my mind ever since I read them when I wrote that paper 20 years ago. In last weekend's New York Time magazine, the quote was repeated in an article about RFK's funeral train. This week I've been thinking again about those words.

There will be much celebration of Barack Obama in the months to come. I'm a Democrat thrilled by the fact that he is my party's nominee; I am excited at the prospect of real change. And I want of my nominee and for my nation the very things that RFK wanted 40 years ago: to be good and decent people who provide healthcare and the chance for real opportunities for our fellow citizens; to end this war and once again make our nation a shining light for liberty, freedom and human rights; to be a force for good in our hemisphere and the world.

I believe that we can do this. And I believe that we must.