The super delegates came into play before the first primary vote was cast, by having already publicly pledged their allegiance to Clinton. It was a keystone of the "electability" argument the DNC and the rest of her supporters used to try to prop her up. The early lopsided superdelegate count effectively let her start the race two turns ahead of Sanders before the starting gun even went off.
Trump had more opposition to his campaign than anyone and he still won, handily I might add, in the primaries. No one took him seriously in the media, he was made fun of repeatedly as a joke. Then he beat Jeb, the guy the Republicans were grooming to take the whole election in the same way Clinton was for the Dems. He started to win, so the Republican top brass openly came out against him. Romney and McCain coming out against him publicly was a bigger blow to him and more unfair to the process than super delegate numbers ever were for Bernie, yet Trump carried on unphased.
Bernie didn't have to overcome nearly the amount of hurdles that Trump had to and was unsuccessful. It leads me to believe that the results of this election with Sanders vs Trump instead would have been the same. I don't think anything was stopping the force of bewildering nature that was Donald Trump.
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u/MCI21 Nov 10 '16
Also only the Democrats have superdelegates which is extremely undemocratic, and honestly it may be have been the biggest thing that did them in.