UPDATE: Obama rolling.
Obama looks like he's headed to a solid win in Maine, which the Washington Post had tabbed as a Hillary stronghold.
Also, Clinton has axed her campaign manager.
---
Speaking of Maine, Steve Peoples reports that AG Patrick Lynch was expected today to campaign there for Obama, in a state where he is seen as facing a tough fight with Hillary Clinton.
Peoples also reports on a phone call from Obama to Lynch, offering an echo of Tip O'Neill's hard-earned lesson about how people like to be asked for their support. Yet since it was reported here, before the Friday night call, that Lynch would be backing Obama, the conversation -- recorded for postery by the AG -- seems mostly to have been a formality.
Yesterday’s announcement followed a brief conversation with Obama Friday night.
The attorney general had been told to expect a phone call at 6:50 p.m. He gathered in his South Main Street office with his son and daughter, his brother John and a handful of his staff members. William Lynch was not there.
Patrick Lynch recorded the speaker-phone conversation to share it with his mother later.
The phone rang at exactly 6:50 p.m. Lynch playfully addressed Obama as “president” instead of “senator,” but the conversation quickly turned serious, according to Lynch.
Obama formally asked for the endorsement. “I said I’m making this decision because I believe in you. That’s what I said to him. And I do,” Lynch said.
In related news, Tad Devine, a Democratic bigfoot with Rhode Island roots, has an op-ed in today's Times, urging superdelegates to hold off on making their decisions.
If the superdelegates determine the party’s nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of ordinary people don’t count as much as those of the political insiders, who get to pick the nominee in some mythical back room, could hurt our party for decades to come.
The damage would be amplified if African-Americans or women, two of the party’s key constituencies, feel that a candidate who represents their most fervent hopes and aspirations is deprived of a nomination rightfully earned by majority support from voters.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and their campaigns, are pressuring superdelegates to pledge support to them before Democratic voters in the remaining primaries and caucuses have made their decisions. But Democratic leaders need to let the voters sort out which one of these two remarkable people will lead our party and, we hope, the nation.
And Bill Reynolds takes a look at the life story of Brown U. basketball coach Craig Robinson, Obama's brother-in-law.