Edmund Muskie

Gwethalyn Phillips, a delegate for Barack Obama, said she was reminded of why she got into politics when she saw Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) address the Democratic National Convention last night.

“I remember when John Kennedy decided to put us on the moon, and challenged Americans to do that,” Phillips said. “Ted Kennedy brought a lot of that back to us last night.”

Of Michelle Obama’s speech, Phillips said that she was “so human, and so incredible.”

Phillips got into politics during the 1960s women’s movement and protesting the Vietnam War.

Joseph Biden will mark the fourth vice presidential nominee from a state that borders Pennsylvania since Democratic candidate Alton Parker picked former West Virginia US Senator Henry Davis in 1904 to run with him against Theodore Roosevelt.  Davis’ neighboring status had no effect in Pennsylvania which cast their votes for the Republican team that year.  In 1968 Richard Nixon tapped Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew to join his ticket and while the Republicans won the election they lost Pennsylvania to Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie.  Pennsylvania was sure to pick a VP candidate in 1972 when Nixon and Agnew were able to turn the tides and defeat George McGovern and former French Ambassador Sarget Shriver who also resided in Maryland. 

Would history have taken a different path if Hubert Humphrey had chosen San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto as his running mate? In late August 1968, just days before the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, Humphrey aides leaked the names of the leading candidates for the Vice Presidential nomination: Edmund Muskie, the Senator from Maine who was eventually picked ; Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma; former Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver, the father of First Lady Maria Shriver; and Alioto.