Politico: Obama sees his reluctance to endorse as good thing for Democratic Party

[democrattotheend]

I don't know why he is being accused of foot-dragging. I thought it was customary for a sitting president to remain publicly neutral until the primary is officially or mostly wrapped up.

President Barack Obama isn't in any rush to endorse in the Democratic race, and he thinks his foot-dragging may be helping Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama hasn't ruled out endorsing, but that Obama himself was served well by a drawn-out primary race eight years ago.

"The Democratic candidates are likely to benefit from having a longer-than-expected campaign. That certainly was true when he ran in 2008,” Earnest said.

He added that the extra months of battling Clinton gave Obama and the party the chance to build a campaign apparatus in states where Democrats had not previously been competitive during a general election. He cited Indiana — a state a Democrat hadn’t won in decades before Obama did in 2008 — as an example.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/barack-obama-democratic-endorsement-220507

[BlueMTexpat]

1. He is doing exactly the right thing. eom

[democrattotheend]

2. I agree

I would guess that he would prefer Hillary as his successor, because Bernie has been more critical of his presidency and because he and Hillary grew pretty close when she served in his administration despite the bitter 2008 campaign. But I think he is smart not to make an endorsement at this time.

I apparently was mistaken about one thing, though. For some reason I thought Clinton did not endorse Gore until the end of the 2000 primaries. But apparently he endorsed him in December 1999, before the voting started. That is actually a bit surprising given that relations between them had gotten kind of tense toward the end.

On the other hand, Reagan held off on endorsing Bush Sr. in 1988 until the end of the primaries.

Before that it was almost 50 years since a president served for 8 years, so I guess there is not a ton of precedent.