{"id":15553,"date":"2008-05-15T16:35:32","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T20:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15553.html"},"modified":"2008-05-15T16:35:32","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T20:35:32","slug":"day-after-edwards-endorsement-obama-support-surges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/day-after-edwards-endorsement-obama-support-surges\/","title":{"rendered":"Day after Edwards’ endorsement, Obama support surges"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get the sense the Obama campaign is having a pretty good day. With Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in the West Virginia primary in the rear-view mirror, and John Edwards’ high-profile endorsement yesterday, Obama and his team have spent the afternoon fighting with Bush and McCain, which is exactly the dynamic Obama wants more of.<\/p>\n

Just as importantly, delegates have been moving to Obama all afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama collected the support of four of John Edwards’ Democratic National Convention delegates on Thursday, then gained the backing of four superdelegates and a large labor union as he marched steadily toward the party’s presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

The fresh support brought Obama’s overall delegate total to 1,895, compared to 1,718 for his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It takes 2,026 to clinch the nomination at the party convention in Denver this summer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking over the headlines, this is what we’ve seen over the last few hours:<\/p>\n

* Three superdelegates from the House — Reps. James McDermott of Washington, and Henry Waxman and Howard Berman of California — all endorsed Obama.<\/p>\n

* At least six of Edwards’ eight South Carolina delegates endorsed Obama.<\/p>\n

* Larry Cohen, the president of the Communication Workers of America union and a superdelegate, endorsed Obama.<\/p>\n

* The United Steelworkers Union, which had backed Edwards, endorsed Obama.<\/p>\n

* The entire party establishment has spent the day pushing back against Bush\/McCain, at least indirectly on Obama’s behalf.<\/p>\n

From Obama’s perspective, this has to be considered a pretty good day.
\n
\nIt’s worth noting that the Clinton campaign got at least some good news today, when the American Leadership Project, a pro-Clinton 527 group, launched a new half-million dollar ad buy on Clinton’s behalf in Oregon.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

As Greg Sargent noted<\/a>, “The spot is an all-positive one touting her strength on the economy, a major departure for the group, which had aired a string of ads attacking Obama in other states. The shift to a positive spot suggests that ALP’s major backers — unions and big Hillary donors — may recognize that the contest is all but over, don’t want to damage Obama in advance of his inevitable general election candidacy, and don’t want to further alienate the party’s all but certain nominee.”<\/p>\n

Also, in case you’re curious (I was) the number of uncommitted superdelegates is down to about 230, which is close to Obama’s overall delegate lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get the sense the Obama campaign is having a pretty good day. With Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in the West Virginia primary in the rear-view mirror, and John Edwards’ high-profile endorsement yesterday, Obama and his team have spent the afternoon fighting with Bush and McCain, which is exactly the dynamic Obama wants more of. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}