We already knew that Barack Obama's campaign has set itself a deadline, and by the time the candidate speaks on Tuesday night Obama staffers want to have the superdelegate endorsements needed in order for him to finally claim the nomination. Now we've got a little more information on how they're going about their work.
"Senator Obama is trying to line up people that are going to come out for him tomorrow during the day so that he'll have enough that puts him over the top that he can declare victory tomorrow," Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., told the Associated Press. "He apparently is telling people that he has the numbers, and that's what's going to happen, at which point it would become moot what the rest of us do."
Separately, CNN reports that there's one big pool of uncommitted superdelegates getting ready to jump en masse to Obama. The network says that most of the 17 Democratic senators who've yet to endorse a presidential candidate will announce their support for Obama sometime this week, though not until after Montana and South Dakota vote on Tuesday and perhaps not even until later in the week. The Obama camp reportedly asked them to declare earlier, but an unnamed source told CNN that "the senators don't want to pound Hillary Clinton, and there is a sense she should be given a grace period."
As of this post, Obama's campaign claims to be 42.5 delegates away from victory. (Some delegates have half-votes.)
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