Reed looking to back presidential candidate with momentum
WASHINGTON—Democratic superdelegate Sen. Jack Reed said Wednesday he's waiting to see which presidential candidate emerges at the end of the primary process next month with momentum before choosing between Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"It's been a bucking bronco," Reed, D-R.I., said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "It's been up and down, and up and down. ... This has been a race of constantly shifting momentum and it appears that Senator Clinton had built momentum, now that seems to be shifting."
Reed said a strong finish by either candidate will be an important part of his decision.
"That's one of the key factors we've got to assess: who's got that momentum heading into the general election and that's unresolved based on yesterday," Reed said.
Obama's push to secure his party's nomination was boosted Tuesday night with a double-digit win in North Carolina and a stronger-than-expected run in Indiana, where he almost overcame Clinton.
Reed is one of the sought-after "superdelegates" likely to choose the party's nominee if both Obama and Clinton fail to win enough pledged delegates during the primaries -- and he's the only undecided superdelegate from Rhode Island. Both campaigns have been reaching out to undecided superdelegates to seek their support.
Superdelegates are the nearly 800 elected and party officials who attend the convention. Unlike regular delegates, assigned to candidates based on the popular vote in each state or congressional district, superdelegates are free to vote however they please.
In the wake of Tuesday's results, the Obama camp was suggesting that it's time for the 270 remaining unaligned superdelegates -- who will determine the outcome of the race -- to get off the fence, claiming the delegate math leaves little path for a Clinton victory.
"Barack Obama took a giant and decisive stride towards the nomination," Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a prominent Obama supporter, said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.
Reed said he has no deadline for a decision, but that he expects many superdelegates to decide after the primaries and caucuses end June 3.
"I have not put an internal deadline, but the reality is we can't go much past the middle of June, not just myself," he said. "The idea that we can wait until August may be possible, but at this juncture I would guess that a lot of the superdelegates would be declaring in June."
Asked about the mounting pressure on Clinton to drop out after the North Carolina and Indiana results, Reed said it's still premature to count anyone out.
"We still have some primaries to run," he said. "It's ebbed and flowed. Both sides, when they had a tactical advantage, said, 'Well, now's the time to conclude because the next primaries, well, they're not going to reverse the arithmetic.' I think we've come far enough down the line that we probably should go the course, at least, to see how these primaries work out. Then, both the candidates have to confront more directly the arithmetic."
Reed said the large Democratic turnout in key states is encouraging for his party this fall.
"There's a strong Democratic wave building," he said. "We need to make sure, I want to make sure, that we've got the candidate who can most effectively tap into that undercurrent of change."
Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I. made a high-profile endorsement of Obama in January. The other members of Rhode Island's all-Democratic congressional delegation, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Jim Langevin, are backing Clinton.
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