Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Monday. Sen. John McCain before his appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Monday.

Barclay Palmer
AC360 Senior Producer

Tonight is Hillary’s night–will it work? She’ll try to galvanize her supporters to back Obama. Her historic drive for the nomination, and her 18 million votes will be acknowledged in a deal letting her be nominated, and then she herself might call for Obama’s nomination by unprecedented acclamation.

Now THAT would be historic. Everyone happy now? Will Hillary supporters stop flirting with McCain, and back the big O?

Separate question—James Carville and others have argued the Dems at this convention are making the same mistake all over again–playing too nice, and not fighting the GOP hard enough.

Yes, Hillary will take’em on tonight, but it’s easy to dump the bad cop role on her. You know from all the cops’n'robbers shows — If the good cop never gets tough, the bad guys run circles around him. Witness McCain’s appearance on Leno, his newest 3a.m. ad, his expected mockery of Obama at the American Legion convention today.

Mccain is not playing the usual quiet role during an opponent’s convention. While Dems understandably get misty over Kennedy and Michelle, McCain is in Obama’s face, and tweaking his nose.

The bell has rung. McCain is coming out swinging. Will the Dems stop smiling at the crowd in time, and get fighting?

We’d love your thoughts…Thank you.

Sen. Kennedy is helped into a boat as he heads out sailing a week after his surgery.

Maureen Miller
AC 360° Writer

Senator Ted Kennedy is back home on Cape Cod. Today he left Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, a week after surgery on his brain tumor. Doctors say the next step for Kennedy is chemotherapy and radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

360° writers do a lot reading on the stories of the day. We call it reading-in. (I know… such a fancy name. Ha!) We read CNN & AP wires, the e-mails we get from crews in the field, the newspapers, the magazines, the blogs, etc. We read a lot.

And, while reading-in, I came across something interesting about Kennedy…

Keep reading

Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

We now know Sen. Ted Kennedy flew down to Durham, North Carolina, over the weekend, and underwent awake brain surgery at 9 Monday morning at Duke. The operation was “successful,” according to his surgeons, and a significant amount of his malignant glioma was removed. The whole thing was a bit of a surprise given that his doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital hadn’t publicly raised the possibility of an operation. They mentioned only chemotherapy and radiation as his options. Clearly, over the last couple of weeks, the senator and his family decided they wanted more. They wanted to fight this tumor, and they talked to experts all over the country and finally decided on Dr Allan Friedman at Duke University Medical Center to help them in his battle.
Read the rest of this blog…

Cate Vojdik
360° Writer

The pictures showing Senator Ted Kennedy surrounded by his family in a Boston hospital catapulted me back eight years to a hospital in Michigan. Thankfully, there were no cameras around when my 75-year-old father, a lifelong smoker, learned that he had Stage IV lung cancer, a terminal diagnosis.

On that spring day, my mother, sister and I sat next to Dad’s hospital bed, numb with sadness, trying to absorb what the doctors, who formed a ring of white coats around us, were saying. I can’t imagine being in the glare of the media spotlight at such a time.

In the photos released Tuesday Kennedy and his loved ones are smiling, putting up a brave front. I can’t know, of course, what went on in the senator’s hospital room during his stay but I have a pretty good idea.

Hearing a doctor tell your father he has life-threatening cancer feels like a punch in the gut. Once you hear “cancer” everything else goes soft, as if someone has hit the mute button. Ordinary time is suspended. A blur of tests and treatment plans begins. Life as you know it ends, even as you try to act like everything will be okay.

It’s natural to put on a brave face, to rally for your loved one. You desperately want to reassure him when you see fear in his eyes. For most of us, this is a painful private exercise.

Keep reading

Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains how doctors will pinpoint the location of Senator Kennedy's brain tumor.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Chief Medical Correspondent

Somewhere deep inside the brain of Sen. Edward Kennedy, the neurons in his left parietal lobe were becoming angry. This is an area of the brain at about eye level just behind the ear. Something had invaded their space, a foreign mass of some type, and they were about to react in a way that would frighten the senator and those around him.

It was this past Saturday when the brain had a sudden burst of electrical activity and caused a seizure, also known as a convulsion. Certain parts of his body would first become rigid, and then start to shake. He would lose consciousness.

In most people, including the senator, there was really no way he could’ve known it was about to happen. Warning signs in the past may have been a vague headache, possibly some numbness in his right arm, maybe even the loss of a word when he was speaking. Any of those things may have been quickly forgotten or dismissed. A seizure, on the other hand, is a stern warning that the brain has reached a break point.

Full story…

Sen. Edward Kennedy and family at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston this afternoon.

Jack Gray
AC360° Associate Producer

In a way, I now realize, I have always subconsciously considered Ted Kennedy to be immortal. I remember the first time I saw him in person. It was the summer of 1994 and I was at the Yankee Homecoming Parade in Newburyport, Massachusetts, a few miles from where I grew up.

The senator was at the time locked in a tough re-election bid against a little-known businessman named Mitt Romney. From my perch on the sidewalk I heard the crowd down the street start to cheer. And then I saw him. The famous face, the wavy hair, the stylish polo shirt. And then I heard the voice - that inimitable sound.

He bounded down the street with his beautiful new wife Vicki in tow, shaking hands and greeting the crowds in that uniquely Kennedy way. For a teenage news junkie like me, shaking the hand of the man whom I had read about and watched on television for my entire life was a thrill beyond words. He was - and is - one of the original political rock stars.

Keep reading

Editor’s note: Dr. Sanjay Gupta is CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent. He is also a practicing neurosurgeon and an assistant professor of neurosurgery. Following is what he told CNN’s Don Lemon right after news of Sen. Kennedy’s brain tumor broke.

Sen. Ted Kennedy had an operation back in October on the carotid artery. That was a prophylactic, preventive operation to prevent someone from having a stroke.

What they saw when they started to examine the senator after the seizure was some sort of abnormality on the left side of the brain, specifically the left parietal lobe. Was that a tumor, was that a sort of the characteristics of a stroke? They didn’t know exactly what it was.

So it sounds like they performed a biopsy, essentially taking a little bit of tissue from that area of the brain and look at that under the microscope. What they found was that this is, in fact, a malignant tumor.

There are different courses of treatment that can be taken at this point; they will depend on exactly the boundaries of this tumor. Some will depend on exactly how these cells react to radiation and chemotherapy. Some will be based on the senator’s preference, what he would like to do now that he has this diagnosis.

This is something that obviously the doctors are going to have to deal with in a relatively expeditious fashion. He’s doing well. It’s not surprising.

The seizures are controlled probably with readily available medication. How exactly you take care of the tumor is something they’re going to have to think about along with the senator and his family over the next couple of days.

BOSTON (AP) — Doctors say Sen. Edward Kennedy has brain tumor; condition discovered after he had seizure.

Statement from Dr. Lee Schwamm, Vice Chairman, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Larry Ronan, Primary Care Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital:

“Over the course of the last several days, we’ve done a series of tests on Senator Kennedy to determine the cause of his seizure. He has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition, and is up and walking around the hospital. Some of the tests we had performed were inconclusive, particularly in light of the fact that the Senator had severe narrowing of the left carotid artery and underwent surgery just 6 months ago. However, preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe. The usual course of treatment includes combinations of various forms of radiation and chemotherapy. Decisions regarding the best course of treatment for Senator Kennedy will be determined after further testing and analysis. Senator Kennedy will remain at Massachusetts General Hospital for the next couple of days according to routine protocol. He remains in good spirits and full of energy.”