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What is going on with Caroline Kennedy and her magical pony trip to the US Senate? Disarray!!

It was all the fault of Bloomberg aide Kevin Sheekey, to begin with, and his plot was to build popular support for her through a media blitz and wait for Paterson to fall in line. That failed because all the New York Democrats decided they resented her, for not paying her New York Democrat dues, and also it failed because everyone was all "why should she be a Senator, again?" So Kevin Sheekey threw himself under the bus by announcing that he's done with this terrible mess to the Post, and today in the Daily News Kennedy's people are all "man Sheekey fucked this up, we are asking him to tone it down."

"There had been huge missteps in the way [City Hall] constructed this," said a source involved in the Kennedy effort to muzzle Bloomberg operative Kevin Sheekey.

"It's just a dialing down of anything that would be harmful to her," the source said.
[...]
Another source said Sheekey was being pushed aside so neither Gov. Paterson nor Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver would think Bloomberg was trying to muscle her into the Senate.

"The Bloomberg support has not been helping, clearly, with Shelly or the governor, whose people have talked about him not wanting to feel boxed in," the source said.

Here is the problem with this story: the Kennedy backlash is entirely the fault of the candidate, not overaggressive lobbying by anyone. The candidate is unqualified and misty-brained and aloof and vague.

But sure, this is a nice last-ditch effort guys, good work.