With the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, who will pick up for the Democrats where Kennedy left off in terms of the health care debate and other key economic issues?

Conventional wisdom (and the stock market) finds that Kennedy’s absence from the Senate floor will be a blow to the health care debate, but this NPR story suggests his passing could breathe new life into the battle.

The American Prospect opinion piece Ted Kennedy: Keeper of the Liberal Flame looks at the “liberal lion’s” contributions to policies like minimum wage and health care.

“This was a litany of causes soon to be lost, if they were not lost already. Industrial policy, jobs for the inner-city poor, universal health care — these were causes that the Democrats discarded in the years that followed. Kennedy maintained his hold on the party’s heart, but its head moved off to neo-land, to the more modest ambitions of a Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton. No one could stir the Democrats like Kennedy, but his speeches to conventions increasingly became affirmations of tribal allegiance, not outlines of the policy directions that the party would take.”

Kennedy discusses drug benefit changes to Medicare in this video from a 2003 interview with the NewsHour’s Ray Suarez.

And the WGBH program Greater Boston features contributions from Sen. Kennedy made to Massachusetts.

How do you think Kennedy’s death will change the debate over causes like minimum wage and health care?