Since his surprising loss to HRC in New Hampshire, Barack Obama has picked up endorsements from:
And the rumor is that he’s poised to pick up Kathleen Sebelius as well.
(To date, Obama has escaped the dreaded Al Sharpton endorsement, but his luck may not hold out forever.)
Did HRC pick up any endorsements this week, other than Henry Cisneros? Of course, she had lots of them beforehand, including more than a third of the Congressional Black Caucus; no one needed Iowa to demonstrate that she was a serious candidate. Maybe there wasn’t anything left for her to pick up. But it looks as if lots of players were just waiting to see if the Obama thing was real before jumping on the bandwagon.
Napolitano, Johnson, and Nelson are all especially noteworthy because all of them have to run for re-election in Red states (though Arizona is moving toward Purple). Their opinion about which of the two candidates is going to be a bigger help (or at least a smaller drag) in the downballot races is worth pondering.
Even conceding — which I doubt — that the Clintons have managed to convert Bill’s many blunders into “experience” and that Obama, as a rookie, would make more rookie mistakes as President, it still wouldn’t be obvious that HRC would have more capacity to get things done. Having a few more Democrats in the Senate and a substantially bigger majority in the House could easily more than compensate for that skill difference when it comes to being able to actually get new policies passed into law.
Update Add Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, another Purple-state officeholder, to the bandwagon.