SANTA FE, N.M.  “Are you glad to see me, Santa Fe?” Edward M. Kennedy roared.

“Yes!” Santa Fe roared back. There were whoops and “Viva Kennedy” chants from the overflow crowd at a community college. A man in the back held an “Obama 2008, Kennedy 2016” sign. “Estoy muy contento estar aquí en Santa Fe con usted,” Mr. Kennedy said in perfectly accented Spanish  that is, perfectly Boston-accented Spanish. (“I am very happy to be here in Santa Fe with you, ” he was trying to say, somewhat imperfectly.)

But Mr. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, is ever game for trying, and the crowd ate it up. The white-haired liberal legend with a bad back, halting speech and worn brown shoes has been called a “lion in winter” so many times that he has the political cliché version of frostbite.

Yet Mr. Kennedy, 75, is hot, hot, hot on the trail, stumping for Senator Barack Obama, who was 15 months old when Mr. Kennedy began his Senate career in 1962. He is drawing raucous crowds, invoking the family legacy, working the lunch crowd at the Flying Tortilla in Santa Fe and getting the kitchen staff together for a photo.

Arriving at a rally in East Los Angeles on Friday, Mr. Kennedy was swarmed by a couple of dozen reporters and the like, a big, fuzzy boom mike hovering over his head, autograph hounds and cellphone-camera paparazzi at the perimeter.