Hillary Clinton Had a Very Super Tuesday

For Democrats, Super Tuesday was an early night. By the time Donald Trump and Ted Cruz delivered closing remarks to their respective conservative fans, their Democratic counterparts had long gone home. Hours earlier, soon after the first polls had closed, most media outlets had quickly announced their projections in that race, predicting big wins for Hillary Clinton across most of the 12 states that cast ballots for Democrats on Tuesday.

On one of the most decisive nights of the presidential race so far, Clinton scored resounding victories over her democratic socialist rival Bernie Sanders in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and her former stomping grounds in Arkansas. In Massachusetts—one of the few states where the results were close—she edged out Sanders by just a few points. Sanders, meanwhile, managed to take Oklahoma, Minnesota, Colorado, and his home state of Vermont—a strong showing, but not nearly strong enough to diminish Clinton's aura of inevitability.

Crucially, the results translated into a huge delegate haul for Clinton, pulling her a tiny bit closer to the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic Party's nomination. In one night, the former secretary of state nearly quadrupled her delegate tally to 544, while her opponent trailed with 349—and those totals don't include the party's "superdelegates," the overwhelming majority of whom are backing Clinton.

The key test for Clinton Tuesday was whether she could activate the broad coalition of voters who rejected her eight years ago—the so-called "Obama coalition" comprised of black and Latino voters who make up a huge bloc of the Democratic primary electorate, especially in the South. In the end, she crushed that test, beating Sanders by huge margins in states like Georgia, where she pulled in nearly three-quarters of the vote.

It wasn't the routing many would have predicted when Sanders first got in the race last spring, but Clinton seemed satisfied with the results—satisfied enough, at least, to dispense of attacks against her rival and turn her attention toward juicier, general election targets. After weeks of hammering Sanders at post-primary rallies, Clinton zeroed in on the Republican Party on Tuesday, previewing a general election message against her likely GOP rival Donald Trump.

"It might be unusual for a presidential candidate to say this, but I'm going to keep saying this: I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness," she told a jubilant crowd at a victory party in Florida. "Instead of building walls, we're going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment."

Sanders, meanwhile, was hemmed in by demographics once again, unable to expand his appeal beyond the white liberals and young millennial "Berners" who have fueled his dark horse campaign. Although the Vermont senator showed no signs of backing out Tuesday night, his remarks at a victory rally in his home state on Tuesday seemed to tacitly acknowledge that the race probably isn't going to end with him in the White House.

"I know that Secretary Clinton and many of the establishment people think that I am looking and thinking too big. I don't think so," Sanders told the crowd. "What I have said is that this campaign is not just about electing a president. It is about making a political revolution." What he left out, however, is that the prospect of that revolution had just gotten a little bit dimmer.

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