Counting superdelegates, the Democrats finally have a candidate, Barack Obama. Considering the scope of his victory, I would be very concerned if I was a Democrat. Consider the following:
If Hillary had won a scant 57 more pledged delegates she would have been the winner. That is a shift of only 1.7%.
Even after all of that, Obama did not win the nomination outright. He had to have the support of the superdelegates. There is still an outside chance that something could happen to discredit him and Hillary could become the candidate.
His win came about because of Hillary's mistakes. Hillary didn't plan on running past Super Tuesday allowing Obama to win 11 primaries in a row. This gave him an aura of invincibility and the all-important 57 delegates.
When Hillary was in a position to compete she did well, right up to the final June primaries. Even after it was obvious that Obama would be the candidate, Hillary managed to win several primaries including some large states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Obama outspent Hillary by a huge margin, even in states that she carried.
Typically a candidate in Hillary's position, trailing with little chance of winning, would have run out of money months ago. As the final primary approached, Obama would have coasted to victory. This is how the Republican race went.
Even allowing that Hillary has resources unavailable to most candidates, we must speculate that a lot of her support came from an underground stop-Obama movement. This would be made up of people who do not dare to say that they oppose Obama out loud for fear of being called a racist so they disguise their motives as support for Hillary.
So the Democrats ended up with a weak candidate who looks stronger than he is because of the enthusiasm of his supporters and his run of 11 wins in February.
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