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Except in Iowa, in January of this year, they did vote. Younger voters represented 22 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus— the highest youth turnout in any state so far — and Obama got 57 percent of them to Clinton’s 11 percent. The youth vote, in fact, turned out to be about 30 percent of Obama’s total vote.

But to my way of thinking, Clinton’s loss in Iowa was a critical one, because she was no longer inevitable. She had let Obama into the game. She had let a candidate with money and a message get off to a running start. She had allowed him to become a credible candidate.

As it turned out, Obama had both a strategy and the money to execute it. His campaign knew what the race really was about: the acquisition of pledged delegates.