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Memo to Superdelegates: Commit Next Week

Posted on: Friday, 30 May 2008, 18:00 CDT

Sen. Hillary Clinton's fading bid to be the Democratic U.S. presidential nominee has a new pressure -- party leaders calling on superdelegates to commit.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have communicated to superdelegates, urging them to decide whether they'll support Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama when primary voting ends Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

We're going to urge folks to make a decision quickly -- next week, Reid said in a radio interview in his home state. We agree there won't be a fight at the convention.

Pelosi said if the nomination fight weren't settled by the end of June, she would step in to resolve it.

Clinton trails Obama by about 200 delegates, the Times said, with only primaries in Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana remaining. Clinton's campaign had hoped to use the time between the end of the primary season and the convention in August to press her argument that she is more electable than Obama.

Clinton's campaign hopes to jump-start her candidacy Saturday, when the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee meets to resolve a dispute over whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan, which she won. The two states lost their delegates because they moved up their primary dates, violating DNC rules.

Phil Singer, a Clinton media spokesman, says Clinton would remain a candidate after Tuesday, competing in what he called the superdelegate primary.

However, one person with ties to the Clinton campaign said the she may might drop out as soon as Wednesday because it would become futile to lobby superdelegates.

Source: United Press International

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