As you all know by now, Bernie won Indiana by 5-1/2 points, or roughly 34K voters out of 630K. The 92 delegates were almost evenly split, because Hillary got most of the 9 supers.
The result did little to change her popular vote lead of about 3M votes, nor did it change the delegate arithmetic much. (In fact if there was a change, she is now less than 200 delegates short of locking up the nomination, and Bernie has to win an even higher percentage of the remaining ones).
So what may have happened, and why does it matter?
For starters, Bernie's folks did a great job. Congratulations. You knocked the heck out of the state and called the daylights out of it. Bernie had some very well-attended rallies, mostly in college campuses.
By the end of GOTV, Bernie people were rumored to be "blind knocking" From registered voter lists in blue precincts. (Which is actually a pretty smart thing to do in this state, because there is no party registration. All we know about voters is whether they took Dem or Repub ballots in past elections. And with a weak state party and weak county parties, a voter's street address may say more about them than their ballot selection history.)
By contrast, Hill had relatively few boots on the ground. Not just many fewer volunteers, but also only a small handful of staffers (probably less than 20 in the whole state). Her campaign arrived here on April 5th, when voter registration had stopped. (I suspect the Bernies did what Barack's campaign did: they registered voters and then entered them directly into the VAN.) The Clinton campaign didn't even have an office in D8, which is surprising given that it has a history of infrequently electing Ds to congress. (Why D8 had no office but D4, D3, D5 and D6 did is beyond me.)
I saw this movie from the other vantage point before in '08, when I was volunteering for Barack. As you may recall, Hillary won by just 1%, although the effect of GOP voters in the primary was unclear. (My theory is that half of them voted against Barack because he was an Af-Am. and the other half voted against Hillary because they didn't like the Clintons. Could be there were slightly more of the former than the latter.) This difference, of course is that Hillary's campaign got away with putting relatively few resources in Indiana. This time, not so much.
This year, Hillary and the Clintons had relatively few events in this state. There were no ad buys, even in our strongholds of Lake Co. (Gary Area) or Marion Co. There was no effort after the "Acela" primaries on the 26th to rush in large numbers of staffers for GOTV. VAN targeting was disappointing, to say the least. (VAN = 'Voter Access Network' - the master database from which walk and call lists are extracted.)
My understanding is that there were two schools of thought in Hill's Brooklyn HQ. We'll call them the "primaries" and the "GEs." The "primaries" wanted to spend more resources to put Bernie away, and the "GEs" prefer to pivot to the general. Note that HRC's campaign can't raise money for the GE until the convention is over.
Clearly when it comes to Indiana, the "GEs" won the argument. Hillary's campaign made an effort in this state, but it was a minimal half-hearted one, on the cheap.
When one looks at the vote totals in the two Clinton strongholds of Marion (Indy) and Lake Co.s (Gary area), this become clear. Clinton won Marion by just a few percentage points (1K) votes, and her approx 10K additional votes in Lake Co. paled by comparison to Bernie's advantage in the rest of the state. A few more staffers in those critical areas and some ad buys might've made this much closer than it actually was.
But since neither the national popular vote arithmetic nor the delegate arithmetic were affected, why does it matter?
It might matter because Bernie is in a better position to raise money for California. I will not be surprised if he out-raises Hillary in May. And whatever Brooklyn saved by not spending in Indiana will have to be spent in New Jersey and California. The saying "penny wise and pound foolish" comes to mind.
It also could be important because Clinton is now in a two-front war versus Bernie and Trump, both of whom seem to have at least one principal objective in common: build up Hillary's negatives. Trump is running to her left on trade, and has already warned that he will start adopting some of Bernie's attacks. Maybe "Crooked Hillary" will become "Crooked Corporate Hillary."
In short: because of Hillary's WTE showing in Indiana, Bernie is now stronger than he might have been otherwise, and so is Trump. Hillary's financial and approval-rating situation in the general election is now weakened.
Brooklyn could've done more in this state to narrow the margin. It would not have been hugely expensive. Considering that they probably invested less than a few hundred $K (maybe not even $100K), a few extra staffers and some critical ad buys in the final week might've cut Bernie's margin from 5.5 points to something much less.
Which is why I suspect the "primary" camp in her Nat'l HQ is telling the "GE" camp that "we told you so."
While the "GE" camp's reasoning was compelling prior to the "Acela" results on the 26th, their apparent disinclination to put up a more serious fight here during the final week was regrettable.
Let me repeat that none of this gainsays the hard work done by Bernie supporters and his campaign here. It's just that Brooklyn may have goofed, by trying to save a few extra bucks.