Is Nancy Pelosi a Closet Obama Supporter?

As a high profile party leader, Nancy Pelosi has refused to support either Obama or Clinton for the Democratic nomination. But twice last week she seemed to have been subtly helping the Obama campaign.

Earlier last week, Pelosi essentially helped to put an end to the "dream ticket" story by saying that she simply did not see it happening. The Clinton campaign had been pushing this story as a way to signal to voters that they could get her experience without losing out on the energy that Obama offers. Of course, the "dream ticket" talk was not helpful to Obama and his campaign had been doing its best to kill the story throughout the week. But nothing his campaign did was quite as effective as Pelosi's definitive statement that it was not going to happen.

Then, on Sunday, Pelosi reiterated the point that superdelegates should not overturn what the voters decide. This is, of course, the very point being made by the Obama campaign since Obama is unlikely to relinquish the pledged delegate lead before all is said and done. Pelosi's comments are essentially the kind of thing you would expect to hear from an Obama surrogate.

Is all of this coincidence? Probably. But the Clinton campaign cannot be happy with the way that Pelosi has been acting like a pseudo-surrogate for Obama during the past week.