Last fall, Clinton supporters predicted that last night Feb. 5 would cement their candidate's position as the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. With commanding leads in both the national polls and most state polls, Hillary Clinton seemed inevitable.

Until hope and change showed up and had a little conversation with the American people.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert remarked as much in an interview last night with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. People don't talk too much about the specific platforms of Obama and Clinton, he said. They talk about 'whether we can heal some of the divisions in society.'

'Hope is a big deal,' he added. 'Optimism and hope are what drives this country.'

But last night, hope and optimism and the call for reform and change didn't have enough momentum to muscle out experience and the institutional strengths (as some in the media are calling it) of the Clinton campaign.

Waking up this morning, Obama appears to have won 13 of the 22 states in which Democratic Party primaries or caucuses were held yesterday. New Mexico may also end up in his column despite something of a scandal there with ballot shortages that delayed a count into this morning.

Obama's states include Illinois, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, North Dakota, Utah, Alaska, and Idaho. And in Missouri, which all of the networks repeatedly described as a bellwether state, Obama stormed back in the wee hours of the morning from a 20-plus point deficit to capture it.

Clinton won 8 states Feb. 5, including four large ones: California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Clinton also came away with Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arizona.

The results in Massachusetts require some scrutiny as the Washington Post reported on Monday Feb. 4th that Obama had erased Clinton's commanding lead after the Kennedy endorsement and even polled slightly ahead.

The Post quoted Michael Goldman (described as a Tufts University professor) on Feb. 4th as saying, 'What's interesting is the speed at which, in Massachusetts, Obama has been able to close an unbridgeable gap.' On Feb. 5th, however, calling Goldman a 'a longtime Democratic political operative,' the Post reported him saying, 'Massachusetts has always been a Clinton state and particularly a strong Hillary Clinton state.'

Despite the punditry, Clinton claimed no surprise victories. In fact, if anything, as People's Weekly World Editor Teresa Albano put it in a late night blog post, overall 'inevitability lost.'

MSNBC's political director Chuck Todd broke the night's resulting delegate count down pretty evenly. About 1680 delegates were up for grabs, and depending on how New Mexico ultimately falls, each candidate will get about 840, he estimated. (More on tricky delegate analysis here.) Whatever slim advantage Clinton has after yesterday in the delegate counts is based primarily on long-standing relationships she has with Democratic Party bigwigs who have 'super delegate' status, but who can also change their minds at convention time.

There were some irregularities. Both CNN and MSNBC failed to call some early states for Obama. National Public Radio called Alabama, a key early state for Obama, at around 8:25 p.m. (eastern), but the TV networks held off until after 9:30 p.m., a full hour later.

In fact, they called Illinois much earlier than Alabama. It may be a minor issue, but the delay allowed Clinton to be declared the winner in at least two states before the results in Illinois, Georgia, and Alabama could give West Coast voters an impression of an early Obama landslide and boost his chances there. And certainly by 10 p.m. (eastern), an hour before polls closed in the west, 8 to 10 states could have been called for Obama, but were not.

Clinton supporters also attempted to tamp down voter turnout in California. Yesterday afternoon, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) claimed to MSNBC that 1 million absentee ballots had been cast in that state, and because they had been cast before Obama closed the gap over the past few weeks, Clinton would handily win the state. Might as well not come out to vote.

The media is also playing a divisive and misleading role through its analysis of the election results. An ongoing mantra in both print and on the cable networks has been that women sided with Clinton and African Americans sided with Obama. But in state after state, where Obama won, he also won the support of both women and whites, at least according to exit polling data. Young voters overall turned in majorities for Obama, however.

States along the northern edge of the country and in the plains, like Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska, Utah, and Idaho with few voters of color and with large participation by women, fell easily to Obama. Lew Lubka, a North Dakota caucus participant described the scene in his precinct as exuberant for Obama with more participation than in the last caucus. According to Lubka, 'The key feeling that I was able to sense from the conversations was the folks wanted change. Enough of the horror of the past two terms. New directions, new blood, new politics. Maybe even peace.'

Roy Bath, a native of Fort Collins, Colorado, said of the packed caucus in his precinct, 'There were all kinds of people there, young, old, people in white shirts, people with rings in their noses and their ears, and lips. The diversity was heartwarming.'

Former Utah resident turned New Yorker Libero Della Piana expressed surprise and delight that Obama captured the nearly all white Democratic Party caucus participants in Utah. 'To me this is truly amazing and exciting. It represents a huge shift in the consciousness of the country and an amazing moment for the democratic forces too,' he said.

In his speech to supporters in the late evening, Barack Obama claimed the outcomes suggested a new time in American politics. 'What people said was that maybe we don't have to be divided by race and region and gender,' Obama suggested.

'What began as a whisper in Springfield,' Obama said, 'swelled to a chorus of millions calling for change. It is a chorus that cannot be ignored. A chorus that cannot be deterred.'

In sum, Clinton was able to hold off some of the head of steam Obama had built up leading up to Feb. 5th. She drew most of her delegates and support in three big states in the northeast and California – not necessarily tough states for any Democratic candidate in the general election. Her campaign did draw broad support from men, women, whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans in the places she managed to hold on to. And Clinton retains 'institutional' (or some might say Democratic Party machine) support in important states.

Still, the pundits give Obama the advantage coming out of Super Tuesday. He has kept close to Clinton on delegates, he was won 15 states altogether (maybe more), and he has a financial advantage fueled by a growing list of individual donors that is breaking all records. Coming out of Super Tuesday, Obama will have distinct advantages in DC, Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington by Feb. 19.

Bob Herbert is right. The big story of Super Tuesday 2008, as he noted on MSBC, is that Barack Obama has changed American politics – though one should add that he and the voters have accomplished this together. Obama's victory in Georgia and his lead in Alabama in the early hours after the polls closed even had CNN's anti-immigrant pundit Lou Dobbs proclaiming that Obama had surprised him. With perhaps a little catch in his voice, Dobbs expressed the sentiment that he never thought he'd live to see the day that an African American candidate would win so handily in a southern state like Georgia.

If you can make cranky old Lou Dobbs choke up, you've made a huge impact.