Obama saved the party from having to cope with that reality in 2008 because his liberalism was more liberal than Clinton’s, at least it was perceived to be. That attracted young white voters, as Sanders is doing this year. But he also had minority voters excited.

Clinton, for all of her supposed faults, has run a campaign so tactically effective she has been able to pull together a coalition similar to Obama’s. This may be even more impressive than what Obama accomplished given that she is the ultimate insider in an anti-establishment year. The things that have convinced white progressives, and a handful of high-profile black intellectuals and personalities, that she isn’t worthy of the nomination have not turned off minority voters, young or old.

She’s been so effective this year probably because she couldn’t ignore the racial divide during her bruising primary battle with Obama. In some ways, she exploited that divide. As she fell behind in 2008, she began talking about “hard-working white Americans” while her husband downplayed Obama’s important victory in South Carolina, where more than half of the Democratic primary voters are black. History has repeated itself, with Sanders and his surrogates seemingly dismissing the results in the South—a region that is home to a majority (54 percent) of black Americans. (The Northeast, by comparison, is home to 18 percent of black Americans.)