The hill that Hillary Rodham Clinton must climb to beat Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination will grow a little steeper on Monday, as it has most days lately.
Margarett Campbell, a Montana state legislator, plans to declare her support for Senator Obama, of Illinois. She becomes the 69th superdelegate he has picked up since the Feb. 5 coast-to-coast string of primary elections and caucus votes. (Note: After this column was published, Ms. Campbell said she would be remaining neutral, citing state party rules that prevent its members from endorsing a candidate during a contested primary.)
In the same period, Senator Clinton, of New York, has seen a net loss of two superdelegates, according to figures from the Obama campaign that Clinton aides do not dispute. That erosion may dim Mrs. Clinton’s remaining hopes even more than internal campaign turmoil, which led to the ouster on Sunday of the campaign’s chief strategist, Mark Penn.
Trailing by more than 160 pledged delegates — those chosen in state primaries or caucuses — Mrs. Clinton has counted on superdelegates to help her overtake Mr. Obama with a late surge before the party’s convention in August. The party’s rules for proportional allocation make it highly difficult for her to erase Mr. Obama’s pledged delegate lead, even if she sweeps the final 10 contests.So her aides have lobbied to persuade those still uncommitted superdelegates to back her — or to continue holding out so her campaign has the chance to demonstrate momentum and superior electability in primaries from Pennsylvania’s on April 22 through Montana’s on June 3.
Yet Mrs. Clinton’s once formidable lead among superdelegates who have announced preferences has shrunk to 34 by the Obama campaign count. The pool of remaining uncommitted superdelegates for her to draw from has dwindled to around 330, fewer than half the overall total of 795 superdelegates.
Mrs. Clinton tried again this weekend to stem the erosion, speaking to Ms. Campbell on a campaign swing through Montana. But Ms. Campbell declined to hold out any longer, saying, “Senator Obama reminds me of why I’m a Democrat.”
Even if Mrs. Clinton narrows Mr. Obama’s delegate lead to 100, and if no further superdelegates make commitments through the end of the primaries, she’d wake up June 4 needing to win over two-thirds of the still-uncommitted superdelegates.
That group now includes 120 Democratic National Committee members, 74 House members, 19 senators and 6 governors, among others. In the last two weeks, however, Mr. Obama picked up support from Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, former Senator John Melcher of Montana and Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming.
Aides said time was actually in Mr. Obama’s favor. The longer he demonstrates he can withstand the heat of a national campaign, they say, the more willing party leaders seem to be to embrace him. “What we’re seeing now is a trickle of people making that final decision to publicly commit,” says Jeffrey Berman, Mr. Obama’s chief delegate tracker.
His counterpart for Mrs. Clinton, Harold Ickes, directs 10 staffers working full time to forestall further defections. Mr. Ickes says the campaign can preserve a large enough pool of holdouts for her to rally before the Denver convention.
“Based on what we’re seeing,” Mr. Ickes said, “most of them are waiting and watching and holding their powder.”
Mrs. Clinton’s strategists were heartened by the negative publicity that followed the inflammatory criticism of the United States by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. They saw the episode as a fresh argument for Democratic superdelegates to stay off the Obama bandwagon.
But Mr. Obama’s campaign, backed by recent opinion polls, argues that his speech rejecting those remarks while calling for dialogue on race relations has prevented fallout among superdelegates.
“Most people think he passed that test,” said Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand.
Some, in fact, said they were drawn to Mr. Obama precisely because of that speech.
Especially in some of the states that have yet to vote, the Wright affair “is a big vulnerability,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a Clinton superdelegate. And “all of this delegate stuff is artificial,” she added, alongside the reality that the party’s nominee must be able to carry big states like hers, where Mrs. Clinton won a disputed victory; Ohio, where she triumphed last month; and Pennsylvania, where she leads in polls.
Such reasoning didn’t dissuade Ms. Campbell, who also spoke to Mr. Obama over the weekend. His handling of the Wright episode showed “his strong points” at racial reconciliation, she concluded, to the benefit of her fellow Native Americans as well as other groups.
“I think he can win a general election,” Ms. Campbell said. “He gives me that belief that America can be united.”
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