White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama hasn't ruled out endorsing, but that Obama himself was served well by a drawn-out primary race eight years ago.
"The Democratic candidates are likely to benefit from having a longer-than-expected campaign. That certainly was true when he ran in 2008,” Earnest said.
He added that the extra months of battling Clinton gave Obama and the party the chance to build a campaign apparatus in states where Democrats had not previously been competitive during a general election. He cited Indiana — a state a Democrat hadn’t won in decades before Obama did in 2008 — as an example.
A longer Democratic primary is “not necessarily bad news,” Earnest said. “I think that would also be part of the explanation for the president not weighing in in that race.”