Finally came the Iowa caucuses, and a rude shock for Clinton.

She had campaigned hard in Iowa despite being advised to skip it because it was her "consistently weakest state." Clinton finished third behind Obama and John Edwards.

The political class, never shy about getting colossally ahead of things, did a head-snapping turnaround and suddenly wondered if she was all but finished.

You must be kidding, New Hampshire seemed to say in response.

"I found my own voice," Clinton said after her restorative New Hampshire win.

In her success were planted the roots of her falling out with black voters, who initially were drawn to her over the lesser-known Obama.

Snide remarks from surrogates drew oblique attention to his race. Then Bill Clinton weighed in, in New Hampshire and beyond, with anti-Obama rhetoric that quickly came to be seen as a sour dose of wedge politics.

Hillary Clinton lost South Carolina and the heated contest headed into an indecisive Super Tuesday, when she won nine states and a territory to his 13 states.

She had once figured it would all be over by midnight on the West coast, that night.

Instead she plunged into states where her campaign had not thoroughly prepared to compete. She revealed that she had loaned her campaign $5 million of her own money.

March madness
She lost 11 races in a row in three weeks, relinquishing a lead in the delegate count that she would not get back.

Well before that fateful string had played out, Clinton replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime aide Maggie Williams. Later, strategist Mark Penn would be cut loose.

A kind of March madness seemed to infect both campaigns.

Clinton's made-up story of landing in Bosnia under sniper fire as first lady underscored questions about her veracity, as revelations about the fiery rhetoric of Obama's longtime pastor kicked up doubts about her rival's judgment.

The month opened with Clinton staging a comeback in the Ohio and Texas primaries, advancing her case that she was the one who could win the big, important states.

In what seemed like an eternal vacuum — or perhaps a vacuous eternity — before Pennsylvania on April 22, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright matter festered and Obama's already shaky standing with some segments of the white population worsened.

Clinton exploited the latter without having to stir the pot on the former. It had a life of its own.

She said merely, but pointedly: "You don't choose your family, but you get to choose your pastor."

After Obama told California fat cats about bitter small-town Americans who clung to their guns and Bible, Clinton saw a chance to become ever more the populist, and went for it with gusto.

In Indiana and North Carolina, she won the votes of two-thirds of whites without a college education, exit polls found.

Superdelegates waiting on the sidelines
In the bizarre calculus of choosing a Democratic presidential nominee, expectations remained paramount deep into the race, even though hard delegate totals give a candidate the prize.

In part, that's because this nomination is close enough that it can only be clinched by the party figures known as superdelegates, who sit out the contests and decide on their own time who's most likely to beat Republican John McCain in the fall.

Through all of Obama's trials, they continued drifting his way, slowly but inexorably. Bill Clinton hectored some of them, to no avail.

Still, Hillary Clinton survived, as long as she exceeded expectations.

At first she was expected to win big in Pennsylvania. Then she appeared to lose most or all of her advantage. So her eventual win there, just short of 10 points, was a bit more than expected.

That all changed in Indiana and North Carolina.

By then, Obama was the one seen struggling, still wrestling with the Wright fallout and his broader problem with some whites.

And so expectations rose for Clinton to win Indiana handily and close in on Obama in North Carolina.

It didn't happen.

In a twisted way, the Wright matter may have been the worst thing that could have happened to Hillary Clinton.

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