by John McCormick
MILWAUKEE – Sen. Barack Obama said this morning that he is still trying to talk to a civil rights icon who has previously backed Sen. Hillary Clinton, but now may switch his superdelegate support to him.
“I have not spoken to Congressman Lewis. I hadn’t spoken to him prior to this report,” the Illinois Democrat said at a news conference. “I put in a call to him after the report to find out what he was thinking. But I have not received word from him yet.”
The New York Times first reported a possible switch of support by Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a superdelegate, last night.
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Obama said he believes superdelegates – party leaders and elected officials not tied to state vote outcomes – are increasingly moving to back the candidate who has won in their home congressional district or state.
“The broader point is that there are going to be a lot of superdelegates who are examining this race as it moves forward,” he said. “I think increasingly the superdelegates that I talk to are uncomfortable with the notion that they would override the decisions made by voters. And so, our position has always been clear, which is that the voters should make these decisions. Whoever has the most pledged delegates at the end of this contest should be the nominee and that superdelegates should ratify that decision by the voters. I know that Sen. Clinton feels differently. We’ll see how the argument plays itself out.”
Asked whether he had reached some kind of superdelegate tipping point, Obama did not express that much confidence.
“I think it’s premature for that,” he said. “I think people are still looking at the contest.”
Obama also provided his view on how the system should work.
“The superdelegate system was set up for a scenario in which nobody had reached a majority, but there was a clear winner among the voters,” he said. “And so the key was to close the gap. That was the point….It wasn’t designed to override the decisions of the pledged delegates.”
Obama said he has not personally gotten involved in trying to negotiate how delegates from Florida and Michigan will be treated at the party’s national convention.
“I’m not personally involved in it. This is something that I think the staffs have been working on,” he said. “Look, all we’ve done is try to abide by the rules…I didn’t even have my name on the ballot in Michigan. Obviously, it wouldn’t make any sense. I think even my six year old would even understand that it would not be fair for Sen. Clinton to be awarded delegates when there was no campaign, and in one of the states at least, my name didn’t appear on the ballot. On the other hand, I want to make sure that the Michigan and Florida delegates have a means of participating.”
Are you concerned about disenfranchisement of voters?
“‘The notion that somehow folks who understood that these. Let me say it this way: The parties and the officials in those states understood what the rules were ahead of time, and we’ve done is try to abide by the rules.”
Obama said he would also be willing to consider a system that would award superdelegates based on the popular vote.
“I’m happy to take a look at the popular vote as well,” he said. “We feel pretty good about where our popular vote is as well.”