The Boston Globe has an article today with a solid wrap-up of how Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic Presidential nomination that a year ago looked inevitably hers. Here's the part that I think really nails it, at least on a practical grassroots level:
...Her campaign had not set up grass-roots organizations in states that came after the initial four contests, analysts said, and was counting on her superior name recognition to carry her to victory in the Super Tuesday contests.
On Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, while Obama concentrated on building support in smaller states with caucus systems, where he could take advantage of his more enthusiastic backers, Clinton set her sights on the big, traditionally Democratic states. She won most of the biggest voting that day - including California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts - but ended up no better than even with Obama in delegates.
The Democrats' proportional system of awarding delegates gives special advantages to candidates who win states by large margins - and Obama cleaned up in the smaller states that Clinton had ignored while remaining close enough in the larger ones to minimize her gains in delegates there.
While her remaining hope the last few months to superdelegates was to say that she would be the stronger candidate in November due to her having more popular votes in the primaries, caucuses reward candidates with very intense suport, even if it's smaller. Hillary's base of old people just isn't going to turn out for them. Obama did a great job of taking advantage of the system (and I don't mean that to be negative).
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