Why won't superdelegates choose now?

Feinstein added, “Sen. Clinton is not an also-ran. She has commanded a substantial amount of the vote.” But Feinstein added, the question is “whether she can get the delegates she needs and I’d like to know what the strategy is to do that — and then we can talk further.”

When one of a candidate’s stalwart supporters says, in effect, “we need to talk,” it’s a bad sign. 

Good etiquette
For some of the Obama supporters in the Senate, refraining from telling Clinton to quit the race seems to be a matter of good form and respect for a colleague who they’ll need to work with in the future.

“Sen. Clinton is going to make her own judgment in her own time and I respect that,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, an Obama supporter from North Dakota. “But I think last night moved us much closer to a final result.”

Uncommitted superdelegate Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado minimized the potential danger of intra-party friction between Obama and Clinton supporters.

“I think if we get this thing wrapped up in the first ten days or so of June, we’re going to be just fine…. I think that’s plenty of time to get back together and to create the kind of unity that will lead to a victory in November,” Salazar said. “I’ll do what I can do in the early part of June to try to push it to a final resolution.”

McCain looks beyond Clinton
For his part, presumptive Republican candidate Sen. John McCain has been looking beyond Clinton and waging a general election campaign against Obama.

McCain charged Tuesday that he has shown no signs in his Senate voting record of transcending partisan division. McCain said that 22 Senate Democrats (from battleground states such as West Virginia and Colorado) voted to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts, so why couldn’t Obama?

But many Senate Democrats see Roberts as the archconservative who has now revealed his true colors in his death penalty, abortion and global warming decisions.

Salazar, who voted to confirm Roberts, said he hadn’t talked to Obama about his ‘no’ vote on Roberts in 2005.

With the Supreme Court building behind him across the street as he spoke in the Senate lobby, Salazar said, “What I think is going to be very crucial is that I think people are going to be focused on the Supreme Court in November because the next president is going to make three or four appointments to the court.”

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