By Josh Richman
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 02/02/2008 03:07:08 AM PST
OAKLAND -- Sen. Ted Kennedy brought a packed house to its feet Friday by urging support for Barack Obama, whom he said represents the youthful vigor and hope that his own elder brothers embodied decades ago.
"Helloooooo, East Bay!" Kennedy rumbled upon taking the microphone, rousing perhaps as many as 1,400 Obama supporters filling Beebe Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church on Telegraph Avenue. "Are you glad to see me? I'm glad to see you!"
Kennedy, 75, who endorsed Obama on Monday, said his relatives have been coming to the East Bay since 1959 seeking votes and support, and have never left disappointed. Today, he said, we face "an election of enormous importance and consequence, perhaps the most important election of my lifetime."
Obama's candidacy provides a chance to continue the forward motion America has made from the civil rights movement through the battles for equality for women and gays and lesbians, he said, a chance "to electrify this nation and get us back to the march of progress." With Congress locked in partisan bickering concerning such issues as economic stimuli and electronic surveillance, he said, "we have to be liberated; we need Barack Obama."
Echoing the words of his brother John F. Kennedy at the 1961 presidential inauguration, Ted Kennedy said Obama's candidacy marks a reinvigoration of citizen engagement and activism.
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