JEFFERSONVILLE, IN.  - Robert Kennedy Jr. — a Kennedy who is not backing Sen. Barack Obama — campaigned on Thursday for Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying he wanted to explain why other members of his family are wrong and he is right.

“I am here because I love this woman,” he told a crowd of Clinton supporters in southern Indiana, which holds its presidential nominating primary on Tuesday.

“There are some members of my family who have decided to do the wrong thing and support Barack Obama,” he said. “Let me tell you why they’re wrong and I’m right, because I know Hillary Clinton better than they know Barrack Obama.”

Kennedy’s uncle,  Sen. Ted Kennedy, and cousin Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, have thrown their support behind Obama.

But Robert Kennedy Jr., the son of Sen. Robert Kennedy who was assassinated while campaigning for the US presidency in 1968, has supported Clinton since she first started to run for U.S. Senate in 1999. She now holds the same U.S. Senate seat from New York his father did.

The younger Kennedy, an environmental activist and lawyer, said Clinton ran in New York after enduring ”one of the most savage beatings of any public figure during my lifetime,” recalling the Whitewater investigation that led to the impeachment of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The former first lady worked hard to win over Republican strongholds in upstate New York and will work hard to win votes nationwide, he said.

“I saw it happen in upstate New York,” he said. “People, this party has gotten a good look at Hillary Clinton, and they know all those negatives that have been grilled into them for ten years by the right-wing Republicans — that it’s not true, that this is a leader who is going to be one of the most extraordinary presidents in our history.”

As for his family, and the Democratic Party, he said, “We’re all going to be together after August.”

 Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.   

 - Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Kennedy and Clinton campaign in Jeffersonville, IN)