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Now that the Democratic nomination has wrapped up, Colorado’s Democratic elected officials –most of whom are superdelegates — are fully on board with Barack Obama, including those who formerly endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver was interviewed by Colorado Square State blogger Aaron Silverstein about whether she would change her superdelegate support from Hillary to Obama.
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When asked if she considers herself an, “Obama Delegate,” at this point, she replied that she has seen the media talk about how, “so-and-so shifts their support,” and it was not like that. In fact it was now a, “…moot point, as Senator Obama is the Democratic nominee. You can say that I am a ‘Democratic delegate.'”
DeGette is the dynamo in the House on stem-cell resarch and health care for children. She has been a super supporter of Hillary, and served as National Co-Chair of Clinton’s Health Care Policy Task Force. On a future health care bill, she had this to say:
[S]he expected the final measure to be a “universal plan that works.” DeGette indicated that she was looking forward to her involvement in shaping the legislation along with Sen. Clinton …”
On the question of whether caucuses are representative of the will of the people and should be changed:
“I think we need to look at a lot of issues,” including super-delegates, proportional vs. winner take all voting, and if caucuses still made sense in our modern, “24 hour news cycle.”
Wendy Norris of the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential) also interviewed Rep DeGette and relates what DeGette told Sen. Obama when they met last week during Obama’s visit to Thornton:
One of the things I told Sen. Obama is that he needs to send some of his fundraising staff over to the convention pronto. He said that he recognized that and he’s doing that.
On Hillary’s future in the Senate:
The thing about Hillary Clinton that, frankly, I don’t think she played up enough in the campaign was that she’s well respected on both sides of the aisle over there. So I know she’s going to play a really key role in the Senate for getting her health care plan passed — assuming that she’s not the vice president. I think she’s got a great career ahead of her. She could even be the senate majority leader.
Norris even asked DeGette about the acrimony in the blogosphere during the primary. Her answer:
Politics is not for the faint of heart. While I think that since the new medium of blogging is not face to face there’s more bare honesty. On the otherhand, you just take the medium for what it is and you move on. You have to do that. I don’t think it’s going to damage the presidential campaign.
Rep. DeGette isn’t the only one looking to unify the party. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an Obama supporter and other Dems also have ideas, one of which is to hold “unity picnics.”
This Saturday in Jefferson County, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter will attend the kind of event that may very well decide the presidential election. Planned only in the past few days and billed as a “unity picnic,” the gathering has nothing to do with the old political storyline of reaching across the party aisle and pulling in swing voters. Instead, the unity that is urgently being sought is within Perlmutter’s own Democratic party. “There will be a number of unity gatherings over the next week or two,” Perlmutter said.
The message to Colorado Democrats: All on board the unity train. Don’t get left at the station or you’ll find yourself with another four years of Republican reign.