White House: Obama poised to be "unifier" for Democrats
With the Democrats' nomination process winding down and emotions still high, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Obama would be "well-positioned" to play the role of unifier for his party going forward.
"Yes, you could expect the president to play that kind of role," he said at today's White House briefing in response to a question from CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.
CBS News estimates that Hillary Clinton has secured the delegate support she needs to secure the Democratic nomination at the convention in July, and she is now the Democrats' presumptive nominee. These delegate estimates include the support of both elected delegates and superdelegates.
One of those superdelegates is, in fact, the man in the White House himself, President Obama. Earnest insisted the president is not yet ready to declare his former Secretary of State the presumptive nominee or to endorse her as his preferred successor over Bernie Sanders.
"At this point, there is at least one superdelegate, the one who works in the Oval Office, who is not prepared to make a public declaration about his endorsement at this point, but stay tuned and we'll keep you updated," Earnest told reporters.
Sticking carefully to the scripts of both Clinton and Sanders' campaigns, Earnest insisted the nomination process is not yet over and said the White House wants to respect the voters of California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota, whose votes will be tallied tonight. Voters in the District of Columbia will follow next Tuesday.
"Just out of respect for their role in this process, we're going to withhold comment until they've had an opportunity to participate, and we'll try again tomorrow," Earnest said.
At the same time, Earnest stoked speculation that the president's endorsement is eminent, saying it was "certainly possible" that Obama would comment on the nomination process while in New York City tomorrow.
The president called Senator Sanders this past Sunday, and the two spoke for more than thirty minutes. The Vermont senator took the president's call on the side of the road in San Francisco's financial district. When asked later about the conversation, Sanders told CBS News that it is "not appropriate" to disclose what he and the president discussed.
Today House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi became one of the latest high-profile figures to endorse Secretary Clinton; she did so the same day as primary voting in her home state, California.
The president has stayed on the sidelines through his party's nomination process, but only to an extent. Though he's stopped shy of a formal endorsement, he's explicitly and consistently expressed respect and admiration for his former rival.
In a podcast interview with Politico in January, Obama called Clinton a "good, smart, tough person who cares deeply about this country." He attributed her struggles to stymie Sanders' momentum to the fact that "she has been in the public eye for a long time and in a culture in which new is always better... you know, you're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people don't, haven't seen before."
"I think that what Hillary presents is a recognition that translating values into governance and delivering the goods is ultimately the job of politics, making a real-life difference to people in their day-to-day lives," he said.
The president will be in New York City tomorrow to tape an interview with Jimmy Fallon and attend fundraisers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic National Committee.