Vowing Defiance to the End

Kennedy prepares to fight Carter at the convention

He lost most of his party's primaries and trails badly in the delegate count, but Senator Edward Kennedy continues to push for the Democratic presidential nomination as if the fight were just beginning. He has vowed to carry his campaign onto the convention floor next month in New York City's Madison Square Garden, scene of many bloody championship bouts. The purpose of his stubborn crusade, Kennedy explained at a lunch last week with TIME editors, was to allow the party to take into account "the very basic and fundamental changes in circumstances," including the nation's economy, since the primaries, changes that Kennedy thinks are hurting Carter badly. Said Kennedy: "I do not think the Democratic Party is prepared to concede defeat. Democrats are going to look around in August and see their potential nominee in some parts of the country is running third."

The battle was fiercely joined last week in Washington before the Carter-dominated convention rules committee. Kennedy strategists tried to persuade the committee not to approve a measure that would bind delegates on the first ballot to vote for the candidate whom they were elected to support. With such a rule, Carter would be assured of getting far more first ballot votes than the 1,666 needed for the nomination; going into the convention, the President leads Kennedy 1,982 to 1,235 in delegates. Thus the Senator's only hope of a long-shot victory depends on his wooing votes from Carter.

Sporting buttons proclaiming FREE THE CARTER 2,000 the Senator's managers pushed for a resolution that would allow delegates to vote for any candidate. They argued that delegates at past Democratic Conventions had been free--in theory, at least--to vote for whomever they wanted, even on the first ballot. Joseph Rauh, a longtime liberal activist, declared that the loyalty rule would prohibit any action at the convention and "turn the Democratic Party from a deliberative body to a group of robots." But Carter's backers at the rules panel ridiculed the Kennedy proposal. Said South Carolina's Don Fowler: "If after five months of primaries and caucuses and 19 million Democratic votes we change our minds now, the people won't stand for it."

Kennedy's tenacity has enraged the Carter camp, which fears a fatal party split. Warned San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein at last week's rules session: "You are about to hand the presidency to Ronald Reagan on a silver platter. I beg you not to do it."

After 2 1/2 hrs. of debate, the Carterites won, 87 to 66, and the rule binding the delegates will be recommended for adoption at next month's convention, where the battle will be fought for a second and final time while the nation watches on television.

If Kennedy fails in Madison Square Garden and Carter, as expected, wins the nomination, will the Senator support the President? At TIME's luncheon, Kennedy revealed some of the depths of his feelings against Carter. "I think that Mr. Carter has created Ronald Reagan," said Kennedy. His explanation: by bemoaning the limitations of the presidency as he sees it, Carter encouraged Americans to look for someone who proposes simplistic solutions to problems. Unless Carter changes his economic policies to support, among other things, more job stimulus programs, Kennedy is not sure at this point whether he could credibly support the President in the election, or that his help would do much good if he did.

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