First Read: How Hillary Clinton Clinched

[wyldwolf]

So how did she get here? After a roller-coaster of political highs and lows since launching her campaign 14 months ago, Clinton took advantage of four factors in her race against Bernie Sanders.

She ran up the score in large states with large minority populations: Clinton's biggest delegate hauls were in large states with large minority populations, which allowed her to build a comfortable delegate lead over Sanders by March 15. By contrast, only one of Sanders' wins -- in Washington state -- netted him more than 40 delegates. All of the other big wins were Clinton's.

Self-identified Democrats were her firewall: The chief reason why Sanders was unable to run up the score in the states he won is because of Clinton's strong performance with self-identified Democrats. When Sanders won, it was due to independents. But in the 27 states with exit polls, Clinton won self-identified Democrats by a 64%-35% margin.

Party establishment embraced her and resisted Sanders: "The Party Decides" didn't work in the Republican presidential race, but it certainly did in the Democratic contest. Superdelegates have overwhelmingly backed Clinton by a 572-to-46 margin.

It is very hard to lose a Democratic race when 1) self-identified Democrats and 2) Democratic Party elites are behind you.

A no- (or little-) drama campaign: Unlike her campaign eight years ago, Clinton's 2016 campaign team never lost its cool or composure, even when things weren't going that well. Producing little drama is a benefit to any campaign -- and it's very hard to achieve.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/first-read-how-hillary-clinton-clinched-n587056

[tonyt53]

1. In other words - she ran a smart campaign, and Sanders did not.

[NurseJackie]

3. With experience comes wisdom.

[mcar]

8. Exactly!

[BootinUp]

2. K & R

[Orsino]

4. Spoiler alert: by winning votes and delegates.

Starting as the default Establishment candidate with decades of connections, money and support may have made her win inevitable, particularly when her opponent hamstrung himself by refusing the easy cash.

The quoted story makes these things sound like strategy, but the story of the Clinton campaign is one of inertia.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. So she was inevitable after all?

Interesting.

[Orsino]

9. Or nearly so.

The onus was on Sanders to win support that had defaulted to Clinton. Doing it without the easy money made it tough, but paradoxically that may also have been his biggest draw.

His was a very different sort of campaign, and obviously wasn't for everyone.

[Lucinda]

5. KNR

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. The Sanders campaign made a terrible mistake to not contest the southern states

They allowed most of the 300+ delegate gain to happen through their own poor planning and stupidity. Even a marginal showing in the South would have made Sanders far more viable later. Allowing themselves to get trounced by 50, 60 points in delegate rich states was a massive mistake. Meanwhile, the Clinton camp sniffed out Sanders error and pushed double hard for delegates in the South. While the Sanders people were patting themselves on the back for "virtual ties" in Iowa and giant wins in delegate poor New Hampshire, the Clinton people were putting together their southern landslides from which the Sanders camp never recovered. It was a deeply stupid political error that Sanders supporters should be angry at the campaign about.