Obama: We’ll likely know who Dem nominee is next week

President Obama, who has been holding out on endorsing a candidate to succeed him, said the nomination will be nearly decided after next week’s primaries.

{mosads}“I think that there’s been a healthy debate in the Democratic Party. And it’s almost over,” Obama said in a town hall interview on PBS Wednesday. “What I’ve tried to do is to make sure that voters, rather than me bigfooting the situation, are deciding the outcome.”

Obama mentioned Democratic primaries in California in New Jersey on Tuesday, when Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota will also vote.

“I think we’ll probably have a pretty good sense next week of who the nominee will end up being. I think both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are good people,” he said. “I think that they broadly share the goals that I have. There are some tactical differences within the Democratic Party about how do you get stuff done. But there’s going to be plenty of time for me to step in and campaign.”

Clinton is likely to clinch the Democratic nomination Tuesday — she’s just 71 delegates shy of the 2,383 needed, including her 543 superdelegates. There are a total of 694 pledged delegates up for grabs Tuesday. Sanders, who only has 44 superdelegates, needs 838 delegates to win the nomination.