The Democrats held their final primaries in Montana and South Dakota today, but even before the polls had closed, it's become clear that the race is over, and Barack Obama will be the nominee. Already ahead on pledged delegates and the popular vote, a surge of superdelegates over the last few days has pushed him to within 4 votes of the nomination. And he will get those four votes from South Dakota.
It's been a long road, and one of the toughest nomination battles in the history of the United States. But the process has ultimately worked, and hopefully it has shown the Democrats that they have nothing to fear and everything to gain from democracy. Letting everybody vote doesn't just build a candidate's legitimacy; it also gets voters enthused and involved - things I'd have thought a "democratic" party would approve of.
As for Clinton, she was a strong candidate (the battle has only gone on because they had two very strong candidates), and she was unfairly treated by a misogynistic media, but at the end of the day, her style of institutional machine politics has lost out to the desire for change. Whether that desire is enough to win the White House in November remains to be seen, but with McCain promising essentially four more years of Bush, it is only likely to grow.
