Seven reasons Clinton lost to Obama. (Hint: Sexism is not one of them.) Plus, this week's media winners and sinners

The evidence that many of Hillary Clinton's most impassioned supporters remain in denial about the real reasons for her loss is on the front page of the New York Times today, in a story by Kit Seelye and Julie Bosman, which describes the alleged sexism in the coverage of her campaign.

The Times reporters are careful not to endorse the allegations they enumerate, but the story leaves no doubt that people like Ellen Malcolm, the president of Emily's List, remain convinced that Clinton was a victim of the press.

After such a hard-fought campaign—and such a painfully narrow loss—it's not surprising that people like Malcolm are still looking for scapegoats. And the story does include some convincing examples of outrageous aperçus, including Tucker Carlson's tasteful remark on MSNBC: "When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs."

But people like Carlson and Mike Barnicle and even Keith Olbermann did not manufacture Obama's victory. And the continuing search for McGuffins to explain Clinton's loss will only delay the essential reunification of the party.

For the record, these are the real reasons Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee for president of the United States:

• A superior understanding of the Internet, which led to the most successful grassroots fundraising operation in the history of American politics. When I first visited the Clinton and Obama websites the week after they had both declared their candidacies 16 months ago, it was immediately clear that Obama's was vastly more sophisticated than Clinton's (and even the camera work on Clinton's Web announcement was painfully amateurish).

• Obama's victory in Iowa, which convinced black voters that he had a real chance of winning. Until then, it seemed likely that he would split the black vote with Clinton, but after Iowa, he won close to 90 percent of the black vote.

• A fatal overconfidence by the Clinton campaign, which, at the end of 2007, was bred by exactly the same pundits who would later be accused of not taking her seriously enough.

• Tremendous overspending by the Clinton operation before Iowa, because everyone in it (including the candidate herself) was convinced the campaign would be over on Super Tuesday.

• The fact that Obama is the most inspiring candidate the Democrats have fielded since John F. Kennedy ran 48 years ago, which meant that an unprecedented number of Xers and Millennials were brought into the political process.

• A crucially timed endorsement by Teddy and Caroline Kennedy, which fed the momentum that eventually made Obama the candidate of the party establishment—and a majority of the superdelegates, who so many people mistakenly concluded in February would be Clinton's salvation. (I wasn't one of them.)

• Congressman Rahm Emanuel's private observation that Bill Clinton was "99 percent in favor" of Hillary becoming president.

Ever since Bill started putting his foot in his mouth in South Carolina, I've been convinced that his own (mostly subconscious) ambivalence about his wife's success must have played a role in his repeated missteps.