Well, let's see where this goes.
Tonight, Arianna Huffington placed the undeclared superdelegates in her sights, calling on her readers to phone or email the holdouts and urge them to commit by the end of the month.
Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend* is when top Republicans usually dump news they don't want to get covered, not when you want to launch a netroots blitz, but here we are:
The dust refuses to settle on the Democratic race. Hillary Clinton wants to cloud the issue with talk of Zimbabwe, Gore 2000, slavery, the civil rights movement, and fuzzy-math-derived popular vote totals. The media steadfastly refuse to clear things up by sticking to the facts, preferring to keep the horse race going.
So let's see if we can put the focus on those with the power to bring to an end this political equivalent of a 50s horror movie (The Campaign That Just Won't Die!): the superdelegates.
There are currently 212 uncommitted superdelegates (not counting Michigan and Florida). What are they waiting for?
I understand there are still three more primaries to go. But there is nothing that is going to happen in Puerto Rico or South Dakota or Montana that is going to convince Hillary Clinton to leave the race. […]
And there is also no reason for the superdelegates to wait until the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on May 31st. […]
So it's time for the uncommitted superdelegates to stop their dithering, come out of hiding, hop off the fence, endorse Obama and officially bring this nominating process to an end. […]
Please call or email the elected officials and track down the DNC members who live in your state and let them know that you want them to stand up and be counted. Now.
Hillary Clinton has more than earned the right to stay in the race until the bitter end. So it's up to the superdelegates to accelerate the bitter end.
(Other blogs will be joining the push in the next day or so.)
The uncommitted Oregon superdelegates are:
Hon. Bill Bradbury
Frank Dixon
Jenny Greenleaf
Wayne Kinney
Gail Rasmussen
Meredith Woods-Smith
Sen. Ron Wyden
(Of the remaining members of Oregon's 12-person superdelegate list, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Rep. Darlene Hooley have endorsed Clinton, and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, Rep. Peter DeFazio, and Rep. David Wu have endorsed Obama.)
Most of the Uncommitted Seven indicated they were at least going to wait until after last Tuesday's Oregon primary to make an endorsement. Bradbury has said he's going to wait until after the early-June primaries.
When Arianna gets her readers amped up, those seven telephones could start ringing off the wall.
The left blogosphere seems to want the Obama/Clinton duel to be over, although the underlying logic offered ranges from "a chance to save face" to "you lost; get over it."
The mainstream news media would love for it to continue through the convention and perhaps even through the inauguration and the new president's first year in office, since that's the kind of story they can cover with the least effort--"Let's You and Him Fight."
I wouldn't care to guess what kind of maneuvering, cajoling, and arm-twisting is going on behind the scenes at the upper levels of the Democratic party--Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, plus Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. I suppose if you're going to call one of our seven hold-outs, you could always ask them that while you've got them on the line.
(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)
*Yes, yes, I just realized tomorrow is Friday, not today. For some reason today has felt like Friday since breakfast.
(Update: The Oregon undeclared count is now down to six: After some nudging, Jenny Greenleaf has endorsed Obama.)
[Want to share/recommend this post to others? Click the Digg button below.]
No comments:
Post a Comment