Cleaver's bluntness

In an unusually frank interview on Canadian public radio, CBC, Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City -- a Hillary supporter and superdelegate -- gives a sense of how tenuous Clinton's hold on many black superdelegates is.

"If I had to make a prediction right now, I'd say Barack Obama is going to be the next president," he said just after 18:00. "I will be stunned if he's not the next president of the United States."

He doesn't back off his support for Clinton, and has criticism for Obama:

"He is articulate - in the black tradition, he would probably be mediocre, but in White America..." he said, a bit dismissively, of Obama's speaking style, going on to joke about the word "articulate."

"For White Americans, it's like, this guy can speak," he said. He also said he was "outraged over the outrage" at the Wright controversy.

Earlier in the interview, he was asked about the race going all the way to the convention.

"If I do the party line, I'm supposed to say -- and maybe I'll say just so if anybody hears it they can say well, 'Cleaver did the party line before he told the truth,' -- we believe that a contest going all the way to the convention is good for America," he said. In fact, he continued, it would be the "tragedy of tragedies."

He made a football analogy of his support for Clinton.

"Even though I don't expect the Kansas City Chiefs to beat the Indianapolis Colts, I cheer for the Kansas City Chiefs," he said, and goes on to cast it in terms of friendship and personal loyalty.

If he switched to Obama, "There would be African-Americans cheering," Cleaver said. "But I would have difficulty shaving in the morning, unless I could shave without looking in the mirror."

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