Time for the Champagne Goggles?
Though Clinton once led in superdelegate endorsements, Obama is catching up.
May 07, 2008— -- Back in early February, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each had a couple of wins under their belt and were close in pledged delegates and in the overall vote total.
Clinton's institutional support from within the Democratic Party allowed her to build a commanding lead in superdelegates over Obama and as a result, hold the lead in overall delegates.
But that was before Super Tuesday, which turned out to be a draw. And before Obama went on a run of 12 straight victories in February. And before Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rev. Wright, Bosnia, Colombian trade deals, NAFTA and Bill Clinton unplugged on the campaign trail.
Despite several rough weeks, Obama has momentum and is rapidly closing in on surpassing Clinton's superdelegate total. In the ABC News delegate estimate, Clinton has just three more superdelegates than Obama. (Compare that to her lead of over 60 superdelegates at Super Tuesday.)
Obama picked up four new superdelegates today, including Jennifer McClellan, a Clinton convert. Clinton had a net gain of zero today because Rep. Heath Shuler's endorsement was negated by McClellan's defection.
Now with just four weeks and six primaries remaining on the Democratic nomination calendar, the chase for the remaining 260-some uncommitted superdelegates is on.
Clinton followed up her squeaker in Indiana with a 90-minute meeting at the DCCC in Washington with seven uncommitted superdelegates, per ABC News' Jake Tapper, including Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania.
ABC News' Zach Wolf and Matt Jaffe report that Clinton said that she met with Members of Congress and talked about solutions for seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan.
"There was a demonstration here right before I got here from West Virginia and I think that everybody realizes that we've got to resolve what's going to happen with the delegates from Florida and Michigan," Clinton said. "And I'll continue to emphasize and stress that we cannot disenfranchise those voters and I hope we'll have a resolution."
ABC News' Political Unit reached out to over 60 of the approximately 80 uncommitted Members of Congress and DNC members in the Washington DC area who are uncommitted superdelegates.
The overwhelming majority of the uncommitted superdelegates reached by ABC News have no plans to publicly endorse right now and most said they will wait until all of the voting is complete on June 3. Last night's results were not enough to get these uncommitteds off of the fence.
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