Both John Edwards and NARAL announced their support of Obama yesterday, and I think the question for both is: Why Now? For Edwards, I guess right after the West Virginia loss and renewed questions about Obama's appeal to working class voters was pretty much the best he could do after waiting until it didn't matter. He might have still been able to get a promise for Attorney General out of it... it did, after all, change the news cycle effectively, so I guess we'll see. However, NARAL, on the other hand, seems to have made a big mistake in their timing. Their press release was was inundated with comments from some very angry Clinton supporters who seemed to feel pretty betrayed by the organization. If you just take a minute to look you'll see about 95% of the comments coming from some pretty pissed off people. Now, I think the NARAL endorsement is perfectly logical given the candidate's respective records on Choice (identical) and the fact that the race has been essentially decided... clearly the Clinton supporters are being a bit irrational, and probably most will cool down as we approach the convention... but it just seems like something they could have avoided. Why not just wait until Clinton drops out? What did they gain here?
UPDATE: It looks like NARAL affiliates are distancing themselves from the endorsement... eplicitly preferring to stay neutral.
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