Free Republic

(CNN)— An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.” “We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.” After facing criticism for a mostly hands-off leadership style during much of the primary season, Dean has been steadily raising the rhetorical pressure on superdelegates. He said Thursday that roughly 65 percent of them have made their preference...

In further evidence that the Democratic primary is straining the party, liberal activist organization MoveOn.org is circulating a petition that attacks a group of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) donors, who had “threatened” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for her stance on superdelegates. “This is pretty outrageous: a group of Clinton-supporting big Democratic donors are threatening to stop supporting Democrats in Congress because Nancy Pelosi said that the people, not the superdelegates, should decide the presidential nomination,” said MoveOn, which is backing Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), in an e-mail to supporters. A group of deep-pocketed donors had, in a letter...

A top strategist to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Saturday countered the recent claims of some prominent Democrats that party elders would be wrong to override the will of their constituents in their choice for the Democratic presidential nominee. In a phone call with reporters, Harold M. Ickes, argued that the 796 so-called superdelegates who could decide the party’s White House nominee were as much or “potentially more in touch” with the issues important to voters than the delegates amassed by the candidates through state He also suggested that Clinton would fight to the bitter end for the nomination,...