Three democratic clans mix uneasily

Neither family wanted it this way, neither the Kennedys nor the Clintons. But the gap of the Democratic convention brought a stark direct contrast: a bittersweet nightshade public jubilation of the life of Senator Edward Jack Kennedy, who is agony from brain malignant neoplastic disease, and an embittered private drama about the terms on which the Clintons would yield the party to Senator Barack Obama.

Jack Kennedy, who endorsed Obama in Jan, had hoped to lead a hearty, full-throated night of anointment the next coevals. Instead, the testimonial to him took on the weight of a word of farewell to the last of the storied Kennedy blood brother, with an strength that rivaled the exhilaration around Michelle Obama's address about the Democrats' next standard-bearer, her hubby.

As one political dynasty celebrated its bequest and ceded the political stage mon night, the other dominant family of the Democratic Party struggled to protect its bequest and accept its own exit from the limelight. Senator Edmund Hillary Rodham Bill Clinton and Bill Bill Clinton had once hoped this convention would be theirs, an jubilance of past and hereafter Clinton White Houses. Instead, they were approach face to face with shrunken, supporting roles.

Still, for many of the female delegates and party activists in Mile-High City, and for many women observation nationwide, the convention's high point was expected to be Bill Clinton's valediction Tuesday night, not Obama's credence speech Th. What she would say then to promote her onetime rival was expected to tell a lot about Democrats' ability to unite for triumph in Nov against Senator John McCain, who is to be nominated officially next week by his Republican Party in St. Paul, Gopher State.

By wed, advisers say, she will have released her delegates to vote for Obama. But many will stick with her to make a symbolic statement. Clinton supporters said she would give a full-throated endorsement of Obama and note that the differences between them were minor compared with those with McCain and the Republicans.

But there were plans for a march Tuesday sponsored by the pro-Clinton "18 Million Voices" group, named for her national vote total in the nomination race. And Republicans had a war room in Denver to exploit the divide, with a McCain adviser, Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief, seeking to meet with Clinton delegates.

Frustrations abounded for Hillary Clinton: At a breakfast with New York Democrats on Monday, she was forced to rebut a new television advertisement for McCain that used her past attacks against Obama. And she faced questions about comments from friends that Bill Clinton was still aggrieved from the bruising primary battle and was unhappy about his speaking assignment at the convention.

At one point, she told aides that the Obama campaign could end the bad blood with her husband by simply acknowledging his policy accomplishments and efforts at racial reconciliation in the 1990s.

One aide, recounting this conversation Monday, observed that Clinton was in an old role, looking out for her husband while trying to protect her own future.

As one Clinton fund-raiser put it in an interview Monday, "Hillary often says that Bill isn't a complicated person - the Obama people don't have to do much to make peace with him."

If the Obamas see soul mates among the Kennedys, they see the Clintons as, if not spoilers, then at heart a more complicated and tactical family.

The same could be said of the Kennedy-Clinton relationship. At the 1992 convention where Bill Clinton was nominated, his biographical film used the grainy footage of his meeting President John F. Kennedy at the White House as a teenager in 1963 to try to establish a natural progression. The two families became friendly, but their bond was ruptured, badly, when Edward Kennedy endorsed Obama in January. The politics of Democratic torch-passing turned pained and personal.

The Clintons and the Kennedys had brought glamour to one another on their much-photographed sailing trips off Martha's Vineyard years ago. That was over. Now the Obamas were bringing a fresh burst of glamour to the Kennedys.

The Kennedys offered a fuller embrace to the Obamas than they ever gave the Clintons; Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the John F. Kennedy, even signed on in a substantive role, helping Obama select his running mate, Senator Joseph Biden Jr.

As the Kennedys sought to make room on the Democratic pedestal for the Obamas, the Clintons were reminding Democrats that the party had a way to go before it could credibly claim unity. Critics of the Clintons have accused them of  selfishness.

But it is a fact that millions of Americans voted for Clinton this year, and that Obama did, at times, minimize the successes of the Clinton administration. And Bill Clinton believes, viscerally, that the Obama camp framed him as a race-baiter, friends say. At the same time, even campaign advisers to Hillary Clinton admit that her husband was blustery and offensive about Obama at times.