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.

Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey just wanted to squeeze in one more bonehead move before the end of the year, having launched his stupid "Bloomberg will run for president" campaign as 2007 dragged to a boring close. That furor lasted well into the beginning of this year, even though no one on the planet besides some billionaires on the coasts ever thought Bloomberg would appeal to anyone besides rich people on the coasts. Sheekey kept pushing the non-story to the press, and the press kept lapping it up, and look, we made a joke about it more than a year ago, we were so young then.

Then Sheekey, Bloomberg's top aide, remember, fucked up his boss's third term egofest, because he thought it was a dumb idea. Bloomberg went through with it anyway and the dailies, usually supportive of Mike, piled on him.

He finished up the year with this weird little pet project, supporting Caroline Kennedy. His master plan was to quickly drum up massive popular support for Kennedy, bypassing Paterson and eventually forcing him to give in to the public will and give this lady the seat her name earned her. Hah.

(Isn't that a counterintutive read on this story?) (Slate, call me!)

The Post reports:

Mayor Bloomberg's top political aide is pulling back on his lobbying campaign to propel Caroline Kennedy into the U.S. Senate because "it wasn't working," according to sources.

"Everything was backfiring," said one source of the intense behind-the-scenes effort by Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey.

"He's not out front any more."

Anyways now the Kennedy thing is surely sunk, as there's no longer any political support for her, just a bit of popular support, mostly among women Democrats, and we know how the party feels about appeasing them. Sorry, Caroline! Back you to go the Upper East Side to sleep in your sheets made of money (probably Euros).

But, you know, mixed blessing. The failure of this bid is good for her because it's bad for us! Say your foreign scandal-mongering publisher really wanted to use his media outlet to take down Ms. Kennedy. Well he's got a better time of it if she's an appointed Senator and not just some harmless New York rich lady with a probably sham marriage and a kid who enjoys a bit of booze now and then.

Of course if you are this publisher, maybe she helps your daughter get into prep school and the little scandal with her daughter is forgotten. But if you are a different foreign-born publisher with no daughter maybe you just float the Kennedy daughter story anyway (supposedly she is anorexic?), along with the other one about how she's boning the publisher of yet another newspaper!

Unless of course it's just not news anymore because her bid is doomed, in which case, forget it.