Forty years later, another progressive idol and Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, ended her campaign for president. She delivered a speech to her staff and supporters, which ended, “Our work continues, the fight goes on, and big dreams never die.”

I cannot think the similarity was coincidental. No progressive worth her salt, let alone one from Massachusetts, cannot recite the Kennedy phrase by heart.

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Kennedy, who came to be known as the “Lion of the Senate” for his prodigious output of legislation, his bipartisan dealmaking and his fiery rhetoric, may be a perfect role model for Warren, whose talent and passion have always been in the nitty-gritty of policy. On Kennedy’s death, President Barack Obama said, “For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.” Kennedy was a continual thorn in the side of the right, infamously demonizing Judge Robert H. Bork, but that turned out to be incidental to his legacy.

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The New York Times obituary for Kennedy recounted his work on an array of domestic policy bills as chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions:

Although he was a leading spokesman for liberal issues and a favorite target of conservative fund-raising appeals, the hallmark of his legislative success was his ability to find Republican allies to get bills passed. Perhaps the last notable example was his work with President George W. Bush to pass No Child Left Behind, the education law pushed by Mr. Bush in 2001. He also co-sponsored immigration legislation with Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. One of his greatest friends and collaborators in the Senate was Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican. … He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968. He helped establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He built federal support for community health care centers, increased cancer research financing and helped create the Meals on Wheels program. He was a major proponent of a health and nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.

Warren seems uniquely capable of playing a similar role, in part because she already has worked with Republicans. In its 2018 report card, GovTrack.us found, “In this era of partisanship, it is important to see Members of Congress working across the aisle. 42 of Warren’s 80 bills and resolutions had a cosponsor from a different political party than the party Warren caucused with in the 115th Congress.”

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True, there is less room for bipartisan dealmaking in the current Senate than there was in Kennedy’s era, but it is not impossible to pass meaningful legislation (as Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has proved). Warren, ironically, stumbled in the presidential race when she initially clung to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all. However, much more representative of her style was the compromise she settled on, essentially a step-by-step approach that would begin with a public option.

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Kennedy was not the only failed presidential candidate to make good use of his post-campaign tenure in the Senate. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) continued his leadership on human rights and became the unlikely hero in defeating the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) provided a flicker of hope for those fighting for objective reality and democracy in his yes vote on one article of impeachment.

Maybe having run for and lost the highest office allows people who care about public service to apply themselves wholeheartedly and with less ego to the task of lawmaking. One could certainly see Warren wheeling and dealing on immigration reform, green energy (with a new generation of Republicans who understand climate change denial is wrong and a political liability), voting access and more.

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As the presidency has grown in scope and power, the media and political culture have become excessively focused on one office and one election every four years. In reality, the great progress in America, from the GI Bill to the Voting Rights Act to the Americans With Disabilities Act to the First Step Act and more, has largely been forged through compromise in Congress. Warren’s highest calling and most productive work may be in once more making the Senate a constructive legislative body.

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