by Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons updated at 11:38 am EDT
HARRISBURG, Pa — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar will endorse Barack Obama later this morning, according to an announcement the Obama campaign e-mailed to reporters this morning.
While Hillary Clinton began the campaign with an overwhelming advantage in endorsements among fellow senators, Obama now leads in public backing among his Democratic Senate colleagues, with support from 13 against 11 for her.
Klobuchar’s support follows a suprise endorsement Friday from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a socially conservative Democratic with a broad following among white working-class voters in Pennsylvania, site of the next Democratic primary.
Commitments of support from Democratic members of Congress are especially important this year because each of them is automatically entitled to a vote at the party convention as a superdelegate, along with certain other elected and party officials.
Since the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primary, Obama has received public commitments of support from 64 superdelegates versus 9 who have endorsed Clinton since then.
In an interview with reporters, Klobuchar said she decided to get off the fence and support Obama because of his popularity with voters.
But she praised Clinton at several turns, and argued against other Obama supporters who think it’s time for the New York senator to bow out of the primary race.
“I believe that Sen. Clinton has every right to continue,” Klobuchar said. “I don’t agree with those who have said things to the contrary.”Klobuchar said she thinks the two Democratic candidates will somehow work things out in early summer, saying “I’m not a pundit” and that she has no idea how that might work.
For her part, though, she said she had been between “Barack and a hard place,” and that it was time to choose.
Then she clarified her analogy, noting that the “hard place” she referred to was the state of “being uncommitted” and not, by implication, her friend Hillary Clinton.
Klobuchar’s daughter summed up the situation for a lot of Democratic senators trying to choose between colleagues Obama and Clinton.
“Awkward, Mom,” Klobuchar quoted her daughter saying about the whole matter. “Awkward.”