Dean to Superdelegates: Make Your Endorsements Now
by DHinMI
Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 06:44:47 PM PDT
Those numerate in delegate math know that Hillary Clinton cannot become the Democratic nomination unless Barack Obama is so damaged by some unforeseen event that he has to give up his lead and drop out of the race. There's just about no conceivable scenario in which that will happen, but Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been trying to keep wavering superdelegates from endorsing Barack Obama by arguing that he can't win in November. Their strategy has been to prolong the race and hope for Obama to destruct.
Last month Howard Dean did his best to take the "let's just wait until the convention" option away from Clinton when he said we would have a nominee no later than July 1st. Last night Hillary Clinton undermined her own private argument that he can't win by publicly declaring that Barack Obama can defeat John McCain. This evening, quite possibly in reaction to the travesty of last night's debate, and probably because he's hearing increasingly frantic concerns from leading Democrats that the longer Hillary Clinton stays in a race she can't win the longer John McCain gets a free pass, Howard Dean scrapped his July 1st deadline:
An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and "I need them to say who they’re for starting now."
"We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time," the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. "We’ve got to know who our nominee is."
Even if she wins Pennsylvania there's no way Clinton will make up any serious ground on Obama. Dean may be pushing superdelegates as a tactical move, to help Obama's momentum. After being far, far behind Clinton in Superdelegate commitments in January, he's now narrowed the gap to just 19. If Clinton wins Pennsylvania on Tuesday—as most people expect her to—she probably won't pick up more than a dozen net pledged delegates; Obama would still maintain a lead of over 150 pledged delegates. There would be nowhere for Clinton to make up the margin. More importantly, it would push Obama closer to the magic number of 2,025 delegates for the nomination (excluding MI and FL). Dean may be hoping that he can spur a sizable contingent of superdelegates to endorse Obama, which in combination with the pledged delegates he'll pick up in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Guam on May 3rd, and North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th, could very well put him over the 2,025 threshold.
Dean has many reasons to Clinton to concede sooner than July 1st. He would avoid refereeing the dispute over seating the MI and FL while Clinton is still claiming she has a chance for the nomination. A Clinton concession in the next few weeks would allow the DNC to announce that those delegates would be seated, and would finally take away from the GOP in those two states the talking point that Democrats don't care about those states' votes.
A Clinton concession would also allow Obama to start directing 100% of his resources toward defeating McCain. It would lead to a huge influx of money at the DNC so they could begin to really ramp up the field operations for the fall, and hopefully to start doing ads against McCain. And most importantly, it would allow Democrats to start unifying, turn away from attacking each other, and turn instead toward campaign against John McCain and the GOP.
Barack Obama will be our nominee. The sooner all Democrats are working together to ensure his election the better.
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