Obama Hits Two Milestones
Barack Obama picked up endorsements from North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan and civil rights icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis yesterday, pushing him, for the first time, over 200 super delegates. Dorgan joins fellow North Dakotan Kent Conrad and three super delegates from South Dakota, including ex-Senator Tom Daschle, Senator Tim Johnson and Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, while Lewis jumped onboard after undergoing what he characterized as a difficult journey.
Obama's lead in pledged delegates has fueled a post-Super Tuesday bounce in super delegate support as well. He sits atop 201 super delegate votes, while Clinton has 255. At one time, the New York Senator had a 90-delegate advantage, MSNBC reports. Obama has cut that margin virtually in half in a matter of weeks. About 340 supers remain uncommitted.
Obama's campaign also announced yesterday the campaign had received donations from one million people, something no campaign has reached during primary season. That's far ahead of rival Hillary Clinton, The Caucus blogs, though both camps are in the middle of massive voter outreach drives in advance of contests in Texas and Ohio.
Clinton's team made more than a million phone calls to potential voters in February, and the new goal is to make 1.5 million more before Tuesday's vote. Obama is in the middle of his own million-call drive, and the campaign blog reports they've made 410,000 by yesterday morning. And just in case, the campaign has opened a headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi, in preparation for that state's March 11 primary.
But, having closed the super delegate gap with Clinton, once seen as key to her strategy of taking down a brokered convention, will there be a contested election by the time attention turns to Mississippi?


