By now, it's just a question of when and how the remaining loose ends of this nomination battle will get wrapped up, and increasingly all signs are pointing to May 20 as the day. Tonight, Obama made the case on NBC Nightly News:
As Barack says, the key thing about May 20 (the day of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries) is that on that day, he will secure a majority of democratically selected pledged delegates. After that point, the most important part of the process will be over. Unless superdelegates decide to overturn the judgment of voters and take the nomination away from Obama, it will be his.
We all know that won't happen, especially after Obama's blowout victory in North Carolina and his close performance in Indiana. (He would have won Indiana were it not for the meddling McCain supporters.)
The key reason we need superdelegates to get off their butts and sign up with Team Obama before May 20 is that as a party, we must make it clear that voters -- not party insiders -- chose our nominee. As I wrote on April 25 after the Pennsylvania primary:
There is no longer any question about whether or if Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president. The question now is when and how he will be recognized as the party's presumptive nominee.
It will happen sometime before the Democratic National Convention, just as soon as he secures the 2,024 delegates it will take to win the nomination on the convention floor. When that moment is upon us, everything else that has happened in the campaign will be overshadowed, rendered moot in an instant.
Think of that moment like the final touchdown that puts away a football game for good. And in this football game, superdelegates control when and where that touchdown will occur. They have two options. They can try to score themselves, or they can hand the ball off to voters, and let the voters finish the game off.
Their decision won't change the outcome of the game. It will, however, change voter's perceptions about the winner of the game -- in this case, Barack Obama.
When Barack Obama is declared the presumptive nominee, it will be tremendously important that he be seen as having won on the strength of his electoral victories. To allow the formation of the unfair and absurd perception that an elite group of insiders handed him the nomination would be incredibly damaging to Democratic prospects in the fall.
Now what we need is for superdelegates to publicly declare their support -- or at least their membership in the Pelosi Club -- so that Barack Obama will be seen as reaching the magic number on May 20 on the strength of support from the voters.
Because of people like kos who have aggressively pushed this idea (for example, here and here), I'm beginning to think the May 20 option might actually happen. Now senior advisors to Obama are publicly pushing the idea as well. Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe has focused on the importance of May 20. And now Barack Obama himself is weighing in.
The superdelegates can make this happen. They can let voters end this nomination battle on a high note twelve days from now, and they can let the healing process begin. They shouldn't think of this decision as a favor for or against either candidate: this something they should do for the good of the Democratic Party.
Somehow, despite the craziness and wackiness of this primary, I think enough superdelegates will step up to the plate so that we can finally end it where it began: at the hands of voters.
