Clinton to Superdelegates: Stop Endorsing People!

Tom Edsall notes today that the Clinton Administration is now begging superdelegates to not commit themselves to a candidate:

In language that could have been lifted from the Obama playbook just a few weeks ago, the email says Clinton backers should make the case to super delegates that: “If House, Senate and DNC members try to end this process now, it would be very damaging to those institutions, the Democratic Party and our chances in November.”

The entire DNC, members of Congress, governors, labor leaders and other key interest group leaders make up the 842 “automatic” or “super” delegates to the convention who are free to cast ballots for the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their state voted. To win, a Democratic candidate must have the support of at least 2025 delegates out of a total of 4048; 20.8 percent of the delegates are super delegates.

[…]

More recently, however, the trend among super delegates making endorsements has been decidedly in Obama’s favor; he has picked up the support of 35, including three who switched from Clinton. The Clinton campaign did not respond to queries as to how many super delegate endorsements she has picked up in recent weeks. The most recent super delegate count on RealClearPolitics shows her lead among super delegates dropping to 59, 241-182.

This is an obvious plea for the Clinton campaign to make, but it just underscores the desperation the campaign is having as the Ohio and Texas primaries are looming. Given that Clinton’s lead in Ohio keeps dropping, and Texas is now a virtual tie, it seems to be virtually impossible that Clinton could pull ahead in delegates even if she could win both states (an outcome that is, at the time of this writing, pretty dubious). Given that strong lobbying of superdelegates has been a staple of Clinton’s campaign since Iowa, this is yet another indication of how dire her prospects are–even from the point of view of her own campaign.

(link via Instapundit)

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Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. yetanotherjohn says:

    Neither candidate is going to get enough regular delegates to win the nomination. So they are both going to rely on super delegates to win (though obviously only one will). Both candidates will have until August to make their case to the super delegates. This is going to be a long season.

    p.s. Just a hint to our democratic party brethren, the only living democrat to get a majority of the presidential election votes (50.08%) is not barred from running in ’08. I’m just saying that if you are having trouble deciding between the two, Jimmy Carter can put down his hammer and be available.

  2. An Interested Party says:

    Awww…heart-felt advice from such a concerned citizen…does the specter of a Democratic president scare you that much? Especially one that will probably be “hard-left” in this “center-right” country? Will we see weeping and gnashing of teeth if Obama is the nominee and he deflects the GOP’s attacks as skillfully as “the Great Communicator”? Hmm…perhaps Obama is the new Reagan…