Reprinted from The Nation
Hillary Clinton won a lot of states and a lot of delegates on Super Tuesday, further securing her status as the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton stacked up big wins in Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas, and she squeaked out a victory in Massachusetts.
That did not happen. Despite the fact that prominent Vermont Democrats such as current Governor Peter Shumlin and former Governor Madeleine Kunin were actively campaigning for Clinton, Sanders won 86 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for the former senator from the neighboring state of New York. That was the biggest win of the night.
If Sanders had just won Vermont, however, it would not have been enough. The senator needed to show strength outside New England, where he had previously won New Hampshire. And so he did. Sanders won the primary in Oklahoma -- a state where his rallies in Tulsa and Oklahoma City drew huge crowds, and where he even visited the Woody Guthrie Center -- by a 10-point margin. He won big in Colorado, a key swing state where he beat Clinton by an overwhelming 59-40 margin. He won 62-38 in Minnesota, a state where Clinton has the enthusiastic backing of Senator Al Franken and her surrogates campaigned aggressively right up through Super Tuesday. And in Massachusetts, where Clinton had the support of top officials such as Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Attorney General Maura Healey, as well as the Boston Globe newspaper, he held the front runner to just 50.3 percent of the vote.