Report­ed as being 25 points down in the polls only one week ago, Bernie Sanders shocked the Clin­ton cam­paign — and more inter­est­ing­ly, polit­i­cal pun­dits and poll­sters by best­ing Clin­ton in Michigan.

So, before Hillary supporters prepare a victory party or Sanders supporters turn away from electoral politics and dig in for the long road to revolution, they would be better off planning how they will get out the vote in the next contests where there are 3,197 delegates left to win.

And only one week ago, read­ing the head­lines and lis­ten­ing to the pun­dit-class com­men­tary on Clinton’s big vic­to­ry on Super Tues­day and her goliath lead over Sanders’ del­e­gate count one could have assumed that the race is over.

“Clinton’s Super Tues­day wins nar­row Sanders Path,” read the Wash­ing­ton Post head­line. Bernie’s bat­tle against Hillary is close to ​“insur­mount­able,” said NBC pun­dit Chuck Todd on the Wednes­day after Super Tuesday.

“From here on in, Sanders ought to lay off the attacks on Hillary Clin­ton, the Gold­man Sachs speech­es and all the rest. Even­tu­al­ly, he’s going to lose. She’s going to win,” wrote The Dai­ly Beast’s Michael Tomasky, warn­ing Sanders that if he failed to do so he ​“dam­ages her rep­u­ta­tion and ulti­mate­ly his own.” Even the Guardian got in the act. ​“With the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tions all but sewn up after Super Tues­day, Don­ald and Hillary can stop pre­tend­ing and go after each oth­er,” wrote colum­nist Richard Wolffe.

Yet, com­ing out of Super Tues­day dur­ing which Sanders added wins in Col­orado, Min­neso­ta, Okla­homa and Ver­mont and a draw in Mass­chusetts to his pre­vi­ous win in New Hamp­shire, Sanders has been able to win vic­to­ries in Maine, Kansas and Nebras­ka. If any­thing, along with the Michi­gan vic­to­ry, it shows Sanders to be viable in small states and large, in cau­cus votes and direct elec­tions — defy­ing poll­sters and pun­dits expectations.

There was no ques­tion that the talk­ing heads of the 24⁄ 7 news machines were shocked by the evening’s result. In fact, in con­tradis­tinc­tion to the pre­vi­ous week, no net­work called the race for Sanders until more than 95 per­cent of the votes were in despite the fact that there had been a 20,000 vote gap for some time. They had, prob­a­bly as most of us do, believed their own pro­nounce­ments about the ​“insur­mount­able” chal­lenge that Sanders faces and Clinton’s stun­ning vic­to­ries as she, like Sher­man, marched through the South.

Yet were those vic­to­ries real­ly so stun­ning? Was it or is it time that star­ry-eyed dream­ers who choose rev­o­lu­tion over creep­ing incre­men­tal­ism pack it up and just get on board with the cam­paign whose vic­to­ry was always inevitable? And how much was the media con­tribut­ing to — or actu­al­ly cre­at­ing — a nar­ra­tive that assures the out­come they describe?

Clinton’s South­ern strat­e­gy and vic­to­ries were cer­tain­ly deci­sive, but were nei­ther sur­pris­ing nor par­tic­u­lar­ly extraordinary.

Like Sher­man, Clin­ton had some heavy ammu­ni­tion going into the fray. As wife of a for­mer Arkansas gov­er­nor, then First Lady and a two-time can­di­date for pres­i­dent, Clinton’s name and per­sona were far more famil­iar to South­ern vot­ers, includ­ing African-Amer­i­can vot­ers than those of the Jew­ish social­ist guy with the heavy Brook­lyn accent from a tiny state up there somewhere.

And like Sher­man Clin­ton had an army behind her — the 461 elect­ed and appoint­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty offi­cials (superdel­e­gates) who the par­ty estab­lish­ment had mar­shaled to pledge them­selves to Clinton’s White House jug­ger­naut. These were the par­ty appa­ratchiks, the peo­ple with orga­ni­za­tions behind them, who reached out to their com­mu­ni­ties to get out the Clin­ton vote both in the South and in the 3 oth­er states, Iowa, Neva­da and Amer­i­can Somoa — she won.

What was sur­pris­ing — and is sur­pris­ing is how is how well Sanders has done so far. Sanders over­came the ​“social­ist” label that for almost a cen­tu­ry had been seen as tox­ic to can­di­dates to win nine remark­ably dif­fer­ent states (New Hamp­shire, Col­orado, Okla­homa, Min­neso­ta, Ver­mont, Kansas, Nebras­ka, Maine and Michi­gan) and fought to a vir­tu­al draw in Mass­a­chu­setts and Iowa.

Which brings us to the num­bers that cre­ate the sup­pos­ed­ly ​“insur­mount­able” chal­lenge for Sanders.

On Super Tues­day, it was report­ed, even before the vot­ing was over that the day’s con­test had cre­at­ed a bar­ri­er for Sanders — a moun­tain of 1,223 del­e­gate votes that dwarfed Sanders’ 574. Even pro­gres­sive com­men­ta­tors, who were and are still feel­ing ​“the Bern,” spoke and wrote about the Sanders’ cam­paign in words more befit­ting a eulo­gy than a ral­ly­ing cry.

Yet while accu­rate, the report­ing doesn’t tell the whole sto­ry. As not­ed above, 461 of the del­e­gates ascribed to Hillary are superdel­e­gates — par­ty lead­ers and elect­ed offi­cials who are anoint­ed with a spe­cial vot­ing sta­tus — who have been con­vinced to say they’ll vote for Hillary at the Con­ven­tion, but are not bound to, par­tic­u­lar­ly if Sanders con­tin­ues to win.

The actu­al del­e­gates won by Clin­ton and Sanders on Super Tues­day were been 609 to 412. One week lat­er, the gap hasn’t changed much with Clin­ton hav­ing 760 elect­ed del­e­gates to Sanders’ 546.

Yet the fact that Sanders could win in elec­tions as well as cau­cus­es, in large states with diverse pop­u­la­tions as well as small states that are pre­dom­i­nant­ly white seemed less impor­tant than the Clin­ton del­e­gate and superdel­e­gate count. That is, I believe, a mis­take. Should Sanders some­how end up win­ning half of the elect­ed del­e­gates over the next weeks and come to a vir­tu­al draw with Clin­ton, the superdel­e­gate jug­ger­naut would crum­ble, with down tick­et can­di­dates exam­in­ing where there best chance for elec­tion in the future lies.

So, before Hillary sup­port­ers pre­pare a vic­to­ry par­ty or Sanders sup­port­ers turn away from elec­toral pol­i­tics and dig in for the long road to rev­o­lu­tion, they would be bet­ter off plan­ning how they will get out the vote in the next con­tests where there are 3,197 del­e­gates left to win.

I do not pre­sume to know who will win the rest of the pri­maries or ulti­mate­ly the nom­i­na­tion. What I do know is that 15 years after George W. Bush plunged the nation into what has become an end­less war and 8 years since his poli­cies plunged the nation into the Great Reces­sion and despite Obama’s best efforts, most Amer­i­cans are poor­er than they were at the onset of the cen­tu­ry, eco­nom­ic and racial inequal­i­ty are on the rise as is crim­i­nal vio­lence, fear and des­per­a­tion. Peo­ple feel stuck.

Who­ev­er wins the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion will have the unen­vi­able yet essen­tial task of unit­ing those who hold two very dif­fer­ent visions of how to move the nation for­ward and inspir­ing them to vote. Should they not, we face the real pos­si­bil­i­ty of a vic­to­ry by the a Trump or a Cruz — two can­di­dates who, with cam­paigns built on jin­go­ism, fear of the oth­er and the promise of a myth­i­cal Father Knows Best world where every­one knows and stays in their place ‑ace — take us down a road from which their might be no return.