Clinton was on a springtime roll until Tuesday, when she lost big in North Carolina and barely prevailed in Indiana. Obama has swallowed several worse days than that and cruised on.

It loomed so large for Clinton because she had fallen so far behind in the contests of winter. One of the striking features of the drawn-out Democratic race is that so much damage was done to her chances in such a short spell.

After Obama's big win in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, a reporter asked Clinton as she campaigned in New Hampshire whether she felt Obama was a phenomenon that she just couldn't overcome, no matter what she did.

Clinton didn't acknowledge it publicly at the time, but months later said privately that she often thought of that question and sometimes felt it had some truth.

The Obama halo
By that thinking, the notion of inevitability had been turned on its head. Maybe he was the chosen one all along.

Then Obama's halo fell in some mud. She fiercely exploited his missteps, criticized him in ways sure to delight Republican ad writers in the fall and — lest anyone miss the alpha female point — downed some beer at a bar and chased it with a shot of the hard stuff.

She was still, by all appearances, in it to win it.

That's what she said at the start. "I'm in to win."

In embarking on a historic campaign to become the first female president, she faced the untested Obama and a field of well-regarded veterans who, for all their qualifications, did not make the pulse race.

"She's unstoppable," John Catsimatidis, a New York businessman and member of Clinton's finance team, said in February 2007. "She's got such a machine."

Even Obama seemed to believe in the Clinton juggernaut.

A big crowd draw even before he became a candidate, he cautioned people not to make too much of the excitement he was generating as a fabulous speaker on his own historic mission — to be the first black president.

"The novelty's going to wear off," he said.

On one Sunday in September, Clinton used the phrase "When I'm president" at least seven times on the talk shows.

"If this were a wedding, we'd be at the 'speak now or forever hold your peace' part," Steve McMahon, a former Howard Dean adviser, said of Clinton's position in October.

"It will be me," she said confidently in November.

Fundraising fundamentals
Even before that, back when she was dismissing him as a policy lightweight who was "irresponsible and frankly naive" on foreign affairs," he was showing he was not to be taken lightly.

He raised almost as much money as Clinton in the first quarter of 2007, then surpassed her the next quarter. Both left the rest of the field far behind.

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