Race matters. There’s no mention of the Democratic Party’s ethnic demographics in theNew Republic’s or the New York Times’ Warren pieces. Scheiber reminds us that Obama was able to upset Hillary Clinton: “All it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back” among progressives. Both Scheiber and the New York Times’ Jonathan Martin mention Bill de Blasio’s victory in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor. And you can’t explain the Obama or the de Blasio win without black voters.

A refresher: The president beat Clinton in a 50-state primary that she nearly won, by the end, as the salience of the Iraq War faded. Obama trounced Clinton in most of the caucuses, building a delegate margin, but he only stayed competitive because of black voters in Southern primary states. Obama was fading until the South Carolina primary, when an electorate that was mostly black gave him a landslide that polling hadn’t predicted. There were 35 primaries to go: Clinton won 21 of them. (That number includes the Florida and Michigan races, which held votes but saw no campaigning due to a party dispute. Still, Clinton won them.) Of the states that went for Obama, only six of them—Illinois, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin—gave him the win among white voters.
...

The point isn’t just that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic front-runner. No one doubts that; everyone’s a little bored by that. The point is that it’s risky, weak strategy to make a presidential primary the test kitchen for policy change. Conservatives learned this brutally in 1972 when they urged Ohio Rep. John Ashbrook to run against Richard Nixon. “What I fear is a dissipation of our strength,” wrote William F. Buckley to a friend. He was perceptive: Ashbrook won a wan 9.7 percent of the New Hampshire vote, and Nixon was emboldened to ignore the right.

Over time, conservatives stopped expecting a president to get elected, lead, and solve all their problems. They built a grassroots machine and a litany of policy goals—the activists would speak, and the president would nod along. By 2012, Grover Norquist could tell a national conferencethat the next Republican president need only come to the job “with enough working digits to handle a pen.” That’s where progressives need to get, that un-glamorous and under-covered triumph of movement over party. Maybe, like Ron Paul, they can use a campaign to build the ranks. But if the Obama experience hasn’t taught them that a dreamy presidential candidate won’t bring about paradise, what will?