Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Beginning of the End, and the End of the Beginning

Well everyone seems to have kept to the script. So as a result, this is going to be a very well orchestrated event today and tonight as we move from Barack Obama being one of the Democratic candidates for President of the United States, to Barack Obama becoming the presumptive, inevitable, predictable and unavoidable Democratic nominee.

All Obama has to do is win some delegates in South Dakota and he can turn over a couple of superdelegate cards and claim victory early during prime time. Or if he’s crazy, he can wait until the polls close at 10 o’clock in Montana and make his victory speech to the west coast.

It all started earlier today as uncommitted superdelegates made their move to narrow the delegate list to 18.5 (as MSNBC is saying at this writing). This is the list of previously uncommitted superdelegates who came out for Obama today (courtesy of Demconwatch):

DNC Tina Abbott (MI)
DNC Joyce Beatty (OH)
DNC Maria Chappelle-Nadal (MO)
Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (MI)
DNC John Daniello (DE)
DNC Jennifer DeChant (ME)
DNC Debbie Dingell (MI)
DNC Carnelia Fondren (MS)
DNC Diane Glasser (FL)
DNC Kwame Kilpatrick (MI)
DNC Debra Kozikowski (MA)
DNC Joyce Lalonde (MI)
Rep. John Olver (MA)
DNC John Perez (CA)
DNC Harriet Smith-Windsor (DE)Rep. John Spratt (SC)
DNC Richard Wiener (MI)

In addition, four superdelegates that had previously declared for Clinton have switched their vote to Obama.

DNC Ben Johnson (DC)
DNC Kamil Hasan (CA)
Rep. Maxine Waters (CA)
DNC Rhett Ruggerio (DE)

And Jimmy Carter, who broadly hinted several weeks ago that he would be supporting Obama now says that he will declare for Obama after the polls close tonight. But I think that pretty much means the same thing, so add to Obama’s list:

Jimmy Carter (GA)

Now this is interesting. Just in the writing of this, that 18.5 needed superdelegates number just changed to 11. At this rate he should have the nomination by 6:48 PM CDT unless someone can go out there and put the brakes on this avalanche that we have all been waiting for.

Now how long do you think it’s going to take for Hillary Clinton to mention that she is open to the possibility of becoming Barack’s runn . . . oops . . . that’s already happened, too.

Things are moving too fast for me today.

Ah, here we go: my superdelegate, Congressman Nick Lampson has yet to declare who he will support for the nomination.

(Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, NICK, NICK, NICK, NICK)

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