Former DNC Chairman Switches From Clinton to Obama
Barack Obama is supposed be having a rough week – and, no doubt, Hillary Clinton and Bill O’Reilly are doing everything in their power to make it one. But he continues to increase his delegate lead. A month ago, before the Pennsylvania Primary he led by 125 delegates. Now his lead is up to 143!
John Nichols, The Nation Magazine, May 1st 2008
But Obama keeps pulling super-delegate backing.
Today the senator from Illinois will get an endorsement that sends a powerful signal that even Clinton’s closest allies are coming to conclusion that the senator from New York needs to quit running a race that is harming not just Obama but the Democratic party.
Joe Andrew, the Indiana politico who served as Bill Clinton’s chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1999 to 2001, has throughout this year’s campaign been a Hillary Clinton loyalist.
Andrew endorsed the former First Lady on the day she announced her candidate for the presidential nomination and he has always been counted at the top of her list of reliable super delegates to this summer’s convention in Denver. After Clinton suffered a series of primary and caucus setbacks in February, Andrew told an Indiana newspaper that his support for Clinton remained “profound.”
That was before the primary process turned ugly, and destructive.
At a planned press conference in his hometown of Indianapolis, Andrew will urge Indiana Democratic primary voters to cast their ballots on Tuesday for Obama.
The good of the party depends on it, says the former DNC chair, who will argue that “the primary process has devolved to the point that it’s now bad for the Democratic Party.”
This is a very hard hit for the Clinton camp.
Not only will Andrews move Obama – who yesterday got super-delegate endorsements from House members Baron Hill, D-Indiana, Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, and Lois Capps, D-California – to within 285 votes of the total he’ll need to be nominated, the veteran Clinton operative outlines a powerful case for why Hillary Clinton needs to quit the contest.
The way to send that message to Clinton, says Andrew, is to vote for Obama next Tuesday.
“[A] vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue this process, and a vote to continue this process is a vote that assists John McCain,” write Andrew in a letter he will circulate today. “While I was hopeful that a long, contested primary season would invigorate our party, the polls show that the tone and temperature of the race is now hurting us… John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from the issues that really affect all of our lives.”
And what of the pastoral challenges Obama has faced in recent days? They don’t trouble Andrew. In fact, he’s encouraged.
“[Obama] has shown such mettle under fire,” writes the former chair of the New Democrat Network. ” The Jeremiah Wright controversy just reconfirmed for me, just as the gas tax controversy confirmed for me, that he is the right candidate for our party.” Indeed, Andrew is so convinced of the need to make the switch that the man who knows just about all of the prime players within the Democratic party is urging “fellow superdelegates across the nation to heal the rift in our party and unite behind Barack Obama.”