Months later one of them shook his head and said in wonder, "It would take ten Freudians to explain what Bill Clinton did to Hillary in South Carolina."

OBAMA WATCHED THE MELTDOWN of the Clinton campaign with a mixture of shock and amus.e.m.e.nt. When he was told about Clinton's on-camera implosion, he could only laugh. But his advisers continued to worry that Bill Clinton was pursuing some masterfully nefarious racial strategy: sacrificing South Carolina's black vote in order to transform Obama from a candidate who was black into the black candidate, thereby helping Hillary with white voters in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania down the road. Mich.e.l.le Obama was on board with that theory. In the closing days of South Carolina, a scathing fund-raising email went out under her name that accused Bill of "misleading accusations," "disingenuous attacks," and "smear tactics."

What effect the racially tinged theatrics of the past two weeks would have on the results was the looming question on primary day. There was little doubt that Obama would win, but how polarized would the outcome be? One late poll suggested the answer might be: very. It showed Obama ahead by just eight points and claiming a meager 10 percent of the white vote.

Harpootlian thought such polls were hogwash. That Friday night, just hours before the voting got under way, he showed up at an Obama rally in Columbia, gazed out at the sea of white faces in the crowd, then went backstage and a.s.sured the candidate that he'd win at least 50 percent of the vote. Obama wrapped a bear hug around Bill Clinton's tormentor, then laughed approvingly and marveled, "You're a crazy crazy son of a b.i.t.c.h." son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Harpootlian was right: the result the next day was what Axelrod described as "a good, old-fashioned b.u.t.t-kicking." Obama prevailed by a whopping margin of 55 to 27 percent, while claiming a quarter of the white vote. More stunning, he essentially tied Clinton among Caucasian men and captured more than half of white voters under thirty.

Obama's victory speech was at once uplifting and defiant. Like his riff at the Iowa J-J, it had the Clintons in its crosshairs but never mentioned the couple. "We're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House," Obama said. "Against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents . . . the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea, even if it's one you never agreed with. . . . Against the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election."

The anti-Clinton thrust of Obama's remarks gained even greater resonance as word trickled in about a parting shot taken by Bill earlier in the day. Standing with two African American members of Congress who were supporters of Hillary's, he was asked by a reporter why two Clintons had been required to take on Obama in the primary.

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88," Clinton said. "Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

When Obama heard Bill's utterance, he said to Gibbs, "Now, why would he say that?"

For many in the Democratic Party, the answer was all too clear. Clinton was comparing Obama to Jackson to diminish the former's victory, and to accomplish the blackening that Obama's advisers suspected was his objective all along. (The Jackson comparison circulated in Clintonworld the night before, in an email from Bill's former White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, which prophesied, "After Feb 5, Obama may prove to be a lesser version of Jackson.") In the days that followed, Bill Clinton would indulge in an orgy of rationalization over what he'd said. He would defend it as a mere historical observation. He would cite African Americans, including Jackson himself, who claimed they took no offense. He would blame the Obama campaign and the press for seizing on his comments to hobble him and Hillary.

Whatever one made of the Jackson comment, there was no rationalizing away the effects of South Carolina. The black vote was permanently lost to Hillary; Obama now owned it, just as he'd predicted a year earlier he would. The Clinton brand had been badly tarnished. The Obama campaign's goal of reviving memories of the Clinton soap opera had been achieved. In addition to her money troubles, her organizational dysfunction, and her strategic confusion, Hillary now had a Bill problem on her hands.

For Obama, all of that would have been sufficient to summon his million-dollar smile. But there was more. For much of the Democratic Establishment, white and black, South Carolina was the moment when it became conceivable-safe, acceptable, even de rigueur-to come out against the Clintons publicly and throw in with the challenger.

How true that was would become apparent just forty-eight hours later, when the most potent symbol of Establishment support would put his full weight behind Obama. Barack didn't generally give a fig about endors.e.m.e.nts. But the backing of Edward Moore Kennedy was an entirely different matter.

Chapter Twelve.

Pulling Away and Falling Apart.

IN THE BIG-GAME HUNT for big-name endors.e.m.e.nts, Ted Kennedy was the elephant that every Democrat yearned to bag. There was no potentate in the party, besides perhaps Al Gore, whose backing carried more emotional and electoral wallop. In the yearlong run-up to 2008, Kennedy had been courted avidly by Edwards, Obama, and Clinton. But there was no way he was endorsing anyone as long as Chris Dodd, one of his best friends, was still in the race. The question was what would happen after Dodd was out-and Teddy was in play.

Kennedy had long-standing ties to both Clinton and Edwards, but from early on he was smitten with Obama. The youth, the vigor, the idealism, the appeal across generational and racial lines-it wasn't just the fawning press corps that saw Obama as Kennedyesque. Teddy was also moved by the sentiments of the ladies in his life, who were unswayed by any gender-based allegiance to Hillary. His brother Bobby's widow, Ethel, had publicly anointed Obama two years earlier, calling him "our next president." Ted's wife, Vicki, adored Obama, and so did his niece Caroline's daughters, who raved about the pa.s.sion that Obama's candidacy was stirring among their teenage peers.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg herself weighed an Obama endors.e.m.e.nt through much of 2007. Famously reserved, Kennedy Schlossberg had never taken part in politics with great relish or involved herself (except in 1980, when Ted challenged Jimmy Carter) in an intraparty scrum. Caroline liked and admired Hillary; they moved in similar social circles in New York. But after furtively sizing up Obama-slipping into two of his events in Manhattan without attracting notice-and being encouraged by her kids, Kennedy Schlossberg was leaning in his direction.

As Iowa drew near, many of Caroline's New York pals were being enlisted to fly out and canvas there for Clinton. Hillaryland was under the impression that Caroline was willing to make the trip. But Caroline, in fact, was dreading a call from Hillary asking her to go. She would have found it impossible to refuse, and once she had campaigned for Clinton, siding with Obama would be off the table.

Hillary, however, as was her wont, had one of her staffers phone Caroline rather than doing it herself. Caroline ducked the call ("I'm sorry, she's not in right now," said a voice that sounded awfully like hers to the ears of Clinton's aide), and later told friends she was chagrined at being fobbed off on Hillary's staff. But she was also relieved to be free to follow her heart. Once Iowa conferred credibility on Obama, Caroline informed him that she was in, and his campaign started scheming about when to unveil her endors.e.m.e.nt for maximum impact.

The Iowa results also induced Dodd's departure from the race, and the Clintons reckoned they now had a shot at landing Teddy. Surely he knew that no one would fight harder than Hillary for his dream of universal health care. Kennedy had twice taken the Clintons sailing on his fifty-foot schooner across Nantucket Sound; surely those voyages on the Mya Mya had cemented the dynastic bond. had cemented the dynastic bond.

But as badly as Hillary bungled Caroline, Bill's handling of Ted was even worse. The day after Iowa, he phoned Kennedy and pressed for an endors.e.m.e.nt, making the case for his wife. But Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.

Kennedy's displeasure with the Clintons only grew through New Hampshire and Nevada; he believed they were playing a dangerous and divisive game with race. With each pa.s.sing day, he was more inclined to follow Caroline into Obama's arms. Beyond his status as a liberal legend, Teddy was a cagey operator. Working the phones, consulting his far-flung network of counselors, he discerned a path that could carry Obama to the nomination-and the role he could play in helping to propel him down it. Kennedy also appreciated Obama's approach to seeking his endors.e.m.e.nt. Obama asked for his support, then gave him s.p.a.ce, having Daschle, to whom Kennedy was close, check in regularly but apply no pressure.

Bill Clinton took the opposite tack: he got up in Ted's grille. In a series of follow-up calls, Clinton went from arguing heatedly to pleading desperately with Kennedy. (At one point, Kennedy told a friend, Clinton went so far as to say, "I love you"-a declaration that Kennedy rendered mockingly in a Boston-Irish imitation of Clinton's Arkansan tw.a.n.g.) When Ted indicated he was going with Obama, Clinton adopted a lawyer's mien, quizzing Kennedy on his motives. "The only reason you're endorsing him is because he's black," Clinton said accusingly. "Let's just be clear."

The day after South Carolina, January 27, Caroline publicly cast her lot with Obama in a Sunday New York Times New York Times op-ed. The next morning, she stood onstage with her uncle and Obama at American University, in Washington, the site of one of JFK's most famous speeches, as Teddy offered his own endors.e.m.e.nt. But Kennedy did more than that. In his distinctive, ringing voice, he vivisected the Clintons and sanctified Obama as his brother's rightful heir. op-ed. The next morning, she stood onstage with her uncle and Obama at American University, in Washington, the site of one of JFK's most famous speeches, as Teddy offered his own endors.e.m.e.nt. But Kennedy did more than that. In his distinctive, ringing voice, he vivisected the Clintons and sanctified Obama as his brother's rightful heir.

"There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a New Frontier," Kennedy thundered. "He faced public criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party. Harry Truman said we needed 'someone with greater experience' and added: 'May I urge you to be patient.' And John Kennedy replied: 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It's time for a new generation of leadership.' So it is with Barack Obama. He has lit a spark of hope amid the fierce urgency of now."

The overt pa.s.sing of the Kennedy torch touched something in Obama. Gazing out at the crowd of euphoric college kids filling AU's Bender Arena, overcome by what the media would describe as a "Camelot moment," he found himself choked up. But gusts of sentiment rarely stayed with Obama long, and that day, his reaction shifted quickly from emotional to political. Riding high, Obama saw the perfect chance to lunge in for the kill.

Let's get Gore on the phone, he told his aides right after leaving the arena.

It had been a year since Barack and Mich.e.l.le trekked to Nashville for lunch with Al and Tipper. Obama had kept in regular touch with the former veep, soliciting his advice on policy, but also cajoling him for his support. When Gore came on the line, Obama once again made the request, attempting to use the leverage from the Kennedy coup to engineer a devastating elder-statesman double header.

There was much Gore found attractive about Obama-from his stance on the war to the gra.s.srootsy, Web-enabled nature of his campaign-and he could scarcely say the same for the Clintons. His relationship with Hillary had been strained and hostile since their White House years, when she and Gore were, in effect, co-vice presidents, competing for power and influence. (Gore felt he had less of both than Hillary; the Clintons neither disagreed with his a.n.a.lysis nor cared.) And while time might have quelled Al's and Tipper's resentments toward Bill over l'affaire Lewinsky, impeachment, and their fallout in the 2000 election, the Gores still looked askance at the Clinton marriage, seeing it as an inscrutable codependency that coughed up chaos and melodrama in equal proportion. The idea of a Hill-Bill restoration caused them both to blanch.

Gore had reasons to hold his tongue, however, in the context of the campaign. His stature and status now were rooted in a realm beyond (and, to his mind, above) partisan politics. His backing of Howard Dean in 2004 had misfired embarra.s.singly. Most of all, Gore knew that if he came out for Obama, his endors.e.m.e.nt wouldn't be the story. The story would be his repudiation of the Clintons. If 2000 had taught Gore anything, it was that the press had an insatiable appet.i.te for Clinton-Gore psychoa.n.a.lysis-and Gore detested being put on the couch. His gut told him his endors.e.m.e.nt might wind up boomeranging on Obama, diverting the spotlight away from the candidate and his vision for the future and training it on a sideshow from the past.

Obama tried to persuade Gore, extolling his gravitas, telling him that the importance of his endors.e.m.e.nt would transcend the media chatter, a.s.suring him they would plow through it together. But Gore wouldn't budge. He was prepared to enter the fray only if Obama was in real trouble-or if the Clintons went nuclear negative and he thought that his endors.e.m.e.nt could end the war before serious damage was done.

Yet in the wake of South Carolina and the Kennedy consecration, Gore didn't see Obama as a man in need of help. He saw a candidate who'd managed to bundle together into one extended news cycle two of the biggest game changers of the race.

A FEW BLOCKS DOWN Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue from AU, Hillary was holding a meeting at Whitehaven with her advisers. Her bitterness over the bestowal of the Kennedy imprimatur on Obama was chilling and close to the surface. "There was nothing I could do about this," she told her aides." [The Kennedys] have always hated us, always resented me and Bill as new people who aren't like them."

Hillary had another reason to be in a foul mood that Monday. The Clintons had just lent $5 million of their own money to her cash-starved operation to see it through Super Tuesday. It was her husband's idea, and Hillary didn't like it one bit. Her midwestern frugality made her a highly nervous Nellie about debt. But Bill kept insisting: Don't worry. I'll do more speeches; it'll be fine. This campaign is a money pit This campaign is a money pit, Hillary thought. Having started the shoveling, she wondered when-and if-it would ever end.

That night, Clinton trooped up to Capitol Hill to attend Bush's final State of the Union address. Hillary had a checkered history with SOTUs. One year, she'd been criticized for talking too much during the president's speech; another, for rolling her eyes; still another, for chewing gum. Invariably, she found herself embroiled in some pseudo-scandal-and this year was no exception.

As the chamber of the House of Representatives filled up, Obama and his new best friend from Ma.s.sachusetts strutted in like a pair of c.o.c.ks of the walk, slapping backs, shaking hands, reveling in the kudos of their colleagues. When Hillary headed their way, they watched her warily, eyebrows arched, whispering to one another. Then Clinton, resplendent in fire engine red and wearing a rictus grin, reached out to shake Kennedy's hand-and Obama turned his back on her and began chatting with Claire McCaskill.

"The snub" was what the tabloids dubbed it, though Obama denied it was any such thing; he was just answering a question from McCaskill, he said. But the truth was that the Obamans had snubbed Hillary well before the speech-by rejecting an invitation from the Clintonites for the candidates to sit together during the address. After the carnage in South Carolina, Hillary's staff saw value in creating "a picture of unity," as one of her aides put it on a conference call. The Obamans preferred the picture of Barack and Teddy joined at the hip.

The Kennedy effect on Obama's fortunes was hard to overstate. For superdelegates, Ted's stamp of approval was at once a potent symbol and a permission slip. It dominated the news in the run-up to Super Tuesday-receiving a boost that weekend when Maria Shriver, another of Teddy's nieces and the First Lady of California, climbed aboard the Obama bandwagon. On TV, on the Web, and in the papers, the story line was one that both elites and the rank and file understood in the same way: Obama was ascendant, the Clintons were in free fall, and a new Democratic order was aborning.

Both campaigns revised their Super Tuesday delegate projections as the poll numbers shifted across the country, the Obamans ramping theirs up, the Clintonites tamping theirs down. Further adjustments were required when Edwards at last quit the race on January 30, done in by his third-place finish in South Carolina. Whom Edwards would endorse, and what he might extract, remained open questions. But what had been a de facto two-horse race since Iowa was now officially mano a womano. And with Obama's momentum surging, it seemed possible that he might not only breach Hillary's supposed firewall but reduce her candidacy to ashes.

As the results rolled in the night of Super Tuesday, however, those expectations seemed to have been dashed. Hillary captured four of the five largest states in play: California, New Jersey, New York, and Ma.s.sachusetts (a victory made sweeter by Kennedy's perfidy). And she was on track to carry the popular vote for the day. It appeared that the House of Clinton was still standing-indeed, that Hillary had won the night.

OUT IN CHICAGO, David Plouffe pored over the returns into the wee hours. Plouffe was a man who found the kind of beauty and meaning in a spreadsheet that others saw in a Van Gogh-and what he divined from the numbers now was pulchritudinous in the extreme.

Hillary might win the night's popular vote, but Plouffe could tell that her advantage was infinitesimal (50.2 to 49.8 percent was the final score) and based on millions of early votes the Clintonites had banked before South Carolina and Kennedy changed the game. Obama was on course to claim more states than his rival-thirteen to her nine. And even more important, he was going to emerge with a handful more delegates than Hillary.

Delegates had been Plouffe's obsession from day one. His eyes were set firmly on the only number that mattered: 2,025. Starting in the fall of 2007, he and his national field director, John Carson, began deploying people and money to the seven Super Tuesday caucus states, believing they would be fertile ground for Obama-low-turnout affairs dominated by progressive activists and susceptible to gra.s.sroots force. Team Clinton, by contrast, with its depleted resources and Hillary-and-Bill-fueled aversion to caucuses after Iowa, devoted next to no a.s.sets to those states. Running essentially unopposed, Obama carried six of them by vast margins, which allowed him to rack up enough delegates to more than compensate for the ground he lost to Hillary in the large-state primaries.

His team was clearly out-organizing, out-strategizing, and out-hustling the other side. And now it looked like the Obamans would be able to out-muscle the Clintonites, too.

In the previous few weeks, an extraordinary thing had happened: money had begun gushing into O-Town through the Web. From the outset, the campaign had labored to build the tech infrastructure to enable that flow, but it wasn't until after New Hampshire that the phenomenon took off. In January, Obama's campaign had raised an astonishing $32 million, much of it online, compared to $13 million for Clinton. And since South Carolina, the pace had only accelerated, fueled by the debut of the singer will.i.am's "Yes, We Can" YouTube video, in which a multiracial array of celebs performed a soulful musical rendition of Obama's speech from the night of the New Hampshire primary.

Plouffe didn't yet know that Hillary had been forced to lend her campaign money; he would find out the next day, with the rest of the world, even as his operation was putting out word that $6 million had poured into its coffers in the span of the previous twenty-four hours.

The significance of Obama's new financial edge was magnified by the calendar. In the weeks between Super Tuesday and March 4-when Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont would vote-there would be eleven contests, four of them caucuses and four primaries with a big share of black voters. With Obama able to outspend Hillary by two or three to one, Plouffe was convinced that his candidate would win nine or ten of the remaining February races, and ama.s.s a redoubtable lead in pledged delegates.

Ever since the failure to put Clinton away in New Hampshire, Plouffe had feared that Super Tuesday might be Obama's Waterloo. Now, at three in the morning, he realized it had been Clinton's. Looking up from his tabulations, Plouffe was gripped by the sort of cert.i.tude that a math teacher has about multiplication tables.

My G.o.d, he thought. We're going to win the nomination. We're going to win the nomination.

PLOUFFE WOULD BE PROVED wrong about one thing. Obama didn't win nine or ten of the rest of the contests in February-he won all eleven, in many states trouncing Clinton by margins far wider than Plouffe dared dream of.

Even when things had been going reasonably well, Clinton had never exactly been a buoyant Hubert Humphrey on the stump. But now her unhappy warriorhood was painfully evident. For two solid weeks during Obama's winning streak, she hauled herself to state after state in which she knew she was destined to be routed. She didn't have any choice but to go and sc.r.a.p for every stray delegate. But the forced-march nature of the stretch only made her agony more acute.

That she was losing-losing eleven in a row, losing the nomination-would've been bad enough by itself, but more wrenching was the way she was losing. Every day seemed to bring some fresh indignity clanging down on her head.

Three days after Super Tuesday, Clinton woke up in Seattle for a day of campaigning ahead of the caucuses in Washington State. On her morning briefing call, Wolfson recapped the past day's coverage, noting that MSNBC's David Shuster was getting blowback for an on-air comment he'd made about Chelsea-something about her role on the campaign trail, about calls she'd been placing to uncommitted super-delegates.

Clinton had been traveling, had heard nothing about it. What did Shuster say?

He said that Chelsea was, ahem, being "pimped out," Wolfson explained.

After a long silence, Clinton exclaimed, "Are you kidding? kidding? He said He said what what?"

Wolfson read the full Shuster quote to her verbatim: "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

Clinton had long before accepted that it was open season on her and her husband on cable and the Web. But this was something else again. Some cable bloviator had referred to her daughter, in effect, as a prost.i.tute.

Another extended silence filled the air, until Hillary spoke again. Her throat catching, her voice quaking, she wasn't angry, she was distraught-and clearly in tears.

How could he say that? How can they get away with that? It's one thing for them to go after me; it's another thing for them to go after my daughter. Where were the women's groups? "If they let them get away with this," Clinton said, "they deserve what they get."

Still crying, she kept rambling-until, out of nowhere, patched in from the road by one of her aides, an unexpected voice piped up. "Hi, Mom, it's me," Chelsea said. "I'm okay."

The voice of her daughter brought Hillary instantly back to composure. And, almost as quickly, her feelings shifted from upset to outrage. When the call was over, she told Solis Doyle she wanted to pull out of an upcoming debate in Cleveland being sponsored by NBC and MSNBC. More than that, she wanted her supporters to boycott those networks-she wanted retribution. Solis Doyle talked her off the ledge. The NBC bra.s.s was apologizing profusely. Shuster had been suspended indefinitely and was writing her a letter of contrition. When Hillary read it, her reaction was tart. "What a bunch of bulls.h.i.t," she said.

Two days later, Clinton returned to the capital to try once again to clean up the mess that her campaign had become. She still had no strategy, no message, no path to victory. Decisions still weren't being made. Phone calls still weren't being returned. Solis Doyle seemed checked out. Williams, frustrated with trying to share power with Patti, was threatening to leave.

Clinton arranged to meet Solis Doyle that Sunday morning to figure things out, air their respective grievances. Patti tried to reschedule at the last minute, citing a child care issue, but Hillary was ready to move on. She organized a conference call and announced that Solis Doyle would henceforth be doing Hispanic outreach and Williams would be running the campaign solo.

Maggie, you stay on the call and get everything moving, said Hillary, signing off.

Um, I'm just finding out about this, Williams told the group. I'll have to call everyone back.

Clinton wanted Solis Doyle to stick around, maybe travel with her, help out in Texas. But Patti was done. Two days later, she sent Hillary a lengthy exit memo in which she warmly praised most of her colleagues-but savagely stripped the bark off Penn. "He is mean and untrustworthy," Solis Doyle wrote. "He is demeaning. People hate him. The staff hates him. The media hates him . . . [He] has sucked the soul and humanity out of this campaign."

While Patti's departure left Hillary without one of her most fervent loyalists, another had become a deeply troubled a.s.set. Two months earlier, Bill Clinton had been the best-loved Democrat in the country and maybe the most popular person on the planet besides the Pope. Now, in something like a heartbeat, he'd been transformed into a figure of derision and scorn.

The day after South Carolina, one of Hillary's senior advisers had told her, We have a problem. If you can't control your husband in the campaign, how are you going to control him as president?

"Well, someone will have to talk to him," Hillary said.

"You need to talk to him," the adviser replied. need to talk to him," the adviser replied.

"I can't talk to him," Hillary said.

But Hillary knew Bill's role had to change, and so did the rest of Clintonworld. Alongside his anger, there was now a self-pity that was nearly all-consuming. The day of the Kennedy endors.e.m.e.nt, Bill sent a wave of discomfort through the crowd at a high-dollar fund-raising lunch for Hillary in Manhattan. After giving some good-humored opening remarks, he was asked in the Q&A about Kennedy and suddenly went all Mr. Hyde. Rattling off a laundry list of favors he'd done as president for Teddy-from making his sister Jean the amba.s.sador to Ireland to keeping the Coast Guard out searching for John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s plane when it went down in 1999-Clinton seemed to be suggesting that Kennedy's failure to back Hillary was the equivalent of reneging on a debt.

Some days later, Bill received a phone call from George W. Bush. The current and former presidents spoke more often than almost anyone knew; from time to time, when 43 was bored, he would call 42 to chew the fat. In this case, Bush, tucked away at Camp David, had a more distinct objective. He wanted to rea.s.sure his predecessor that he he didn't think Clinton was a racist. didn't think Clinton was a racist.

The irony of the situation tickled Bush, but he also felt sympathy for Bill. Hey, buddy, Bush said, I know you're coming under attack; you just gotta keep your chin up. Clinton thanked Bush-then treated him to a fifteen-minute tirade about the injustices that had befallen him and the sources of his suffering.

Bush was the highest-ranking personage serenaded with this rant. But few people who spoke to Clinton that February (or for months thereafter) didn't hear a version of it. His daily conference calls with the campaign took on a Groundhog Day Groundhog Day quality: morning after morning, the same litany of woe, same howls of protest, same wails about his persecution. On more than one call, Clinton became so overwrought that he broke down in tears. How extreme was the infatuation of the press corps with Obama? "I'll tell you," Bill said. "They just want to cream in their jeans over this guy." quality: morning after morning, the same litany of woe, same howls of protest, same wails about his persecution. On more than one call, Clinton became so overwrought that he broke down in tears. How extreme was the infatuation of the press corps with Obama? "I'll tell you," Bill said. "They just want to cream in their jeans over this guy."

Given Clinton's state of mind, the consensus in Hillaryland was that it might be wise to keep him away from cameras and microphones as much as possible. With Williams in charge and Mills running the campaign's daily operations, Bill's internal influence grew, as they brought him into the decision-making loop on advertising and other matters. But his public visibility was greatly reduced. From then on, he would spend much of his time in rural areas, places that, as the campaign put it, had "never seen a president."

Hillary agreed with the plan, though her att.i.tude toward Bill remained the same as it had been through all their years together. Even at his most scandalous, most inconvenient, she still found her husband a marvel. "When he dies, they should study his brain," she'd say.

ON FEBRUARY 19, OBAMA won his tenth straight contest, administering a 5841 drubbing to Clinton in the Wisconsin primary, carrying virtually every demographic group, and opening up a pledged-delegate lead of 159.

The next day, Plouffe, on a conference call with reporters, basically declared the race over. Given the rules governing the allocation of delegates in the Democratic Party, Plouffe argued, Clinton would have to win Ohio and Texas by thirty points each, and then win the Pennsylvania primary in April by forty, to close the gap. "This is a wide, wide lead right now," he said. "The Clinton campaign keeps saying the race is essentially tied. That's just lunacy."

Plouffe was aware his comments would be interpreted as an attempt to drive Hillary from the race. He knew he risked rallying her supporters. But Plouffe also knew Obama might wind up just short of the magic 2,025 delegates-leaving the possibility of Clinton prevailing by dint of the superdelegates. Plouffe therefore thought it imperative to start driving the argument, with supers and the press, that the leader in pledged delegates should be, and would be, the party's eventual nominee.

Cold-eyed calculation wasn't the only thing fueling Plouffe's taunts. Frustration also played a part. The longer Clinton stayed in, the more money the Obamans would have to waste in pursuit of a foregone conclusion-millions of bucks that would be better spent on the general election.

Obama was frustrated, too. By the end of his winning streak, the thrill of victory had lost a modic.u.m of its l.u.s.ter for him. He complained to his aides about the sameness of the succession of mega-rallies, about a certain staleness creeping in. Axelrod likened Hillary to Freddy Krueger, and that made Obama laugh. "My G.o.d, these people never die," Barack said. Yet he chafed at the party's acquiescence in her continuing her quest. If I had lost eleven in a row, he told Gibbs, I can a.s.sure you there wouldn't be a lot of debate about me sticking in the race. Everyone would be pushing me out.

Obama's irritation was leavened by a grudging respect for Hillary's tenacity. d.a.m.n, she's tough d.a.m.n, she's tough, he thought. But mostly he was confused. Obama had never considered Clinton irrational, yet her refusal to surrender just seemed crazy.

During the course of the campaign, Obama had asked the suits-as well as Emanuel, who had become his on-call expert regarding all things Clinton-countless questions about the tactics and tendencies of the couple. Now he had only one: What on earth was Hillary thinking?

CLINTON TOOK THE STAGE in an open-air plaza in downtown San Antonio wearing a dark pantsuit and a pasted-on smile to disguise the depth of her desperation. Under the pantsuit, she had on an orange top that matched the color of the sign fastened to the lectern in front of her: TEXAS-CLINTON COUNTRY. Hillary thought it was true, but she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure of much anymore.

It was nearly ten o'clock at night on February 29, less than four days before primary day in Texas and Ohio. Clinton was exhausted. But San Antonio always gave her a boost; it was a special place for her and Bill. Thirty-six years earlier, they'd come down here from Yale to work for George McGovern, getting their first taste of national politics. And although everyone was duly dazzled by Bill back then, there were those who saw greatness in Hillary, too. A local organizer named Betsey Wright, who later became an indispensable figure in Bill's rise, told her that she might have what it took to become the nation's first female president.

But now, as Hillary looked out on a crowd of three thousand a stone's throw from the Alamo, that dream seemed to be crumbling in her hands. She knew that she had to beat Obama in Texas and Ohio to justify carrying on-even Bill had said so publicly a few days earlier. She was doing fine in Ohio, but in Texas, where Obama was outspending her by a mile, she was slipping. This might be one of the last big rallies of her political life.

So, despite her fatigue, her bone-weariness, and the aching throat that had turned her voice into a raspy growl, Clinton launched into her spiel with gusto-and then, suddenly, the power failed, killing the lights and the sound system, too. Clinton didn't pause. Standing there in the dark, she just plowed right on through.

What was sustaining her? What was was she thinking? It was simple. She thought Obama wasn't qualified to be commander in chief. And she thought the Republicans would destroy him in the fall, preying on his inexperience and insubstantiality, prying him open and disemboweling him. she thinking? It was simple. She thought Obama wasn't qualified to be commander in chief. And she thought the Republicans would destroy him in the fall, preying on his inexperience and insubstantiality, prying him open and disemboweling him.

That morning her campaign had released a new ad in Texas that went directly to those points. t.i.tled "3AM," it was a concoction of Penn's drawn from a script he'd drafted a few days earlier on his laptop in a file called "gamechangers." The ad was aimed at men in Texas and was basically an update of the famous red-phone spot that Walter Mondale used against Gary Hart in 1984. There were sleeping children, the sound of a phone ringing, and a question: When an international crisis. .h.i.ts, who do you want picking up the receiver in the Oval Office? A shot of Hillary, a.s.sured and calm, phone to ear, provided the answer; Obama's name was never mentioned.

Even so, "3AM" was the first ad the Clintonites had run that challenged Obama's fitness for office. But Hillary didn't have a moment's hesitation about airing it. For days, the Obama campaign had been hitting her with negative direct mail on health care and NAFTA-even as Obama continued to play the part of holier-than-thou lord of uplift. What a phony What a phony, she thought. What a hypocrite. What a hypocrite. Her dander was up. Her dander was up.

After more than a year of battling Obama, she'd concluded he was a cipher. In prepping for their debate a week earlier in Cleveland, she had argued with her staff over whether she should call him a "blank slate." She compared him to a preacher, a religious leader, and said, "We have to make people understand that he's not real." Obama's vast crowds, his wild-eyed devotees-it was a kind of ma.s.s hysteria.

She was like Ca.s.sandra, convinced she could see the future, filled with angst that no one believed her. She looked on in amazement as more and more superdelegates-so many old allies of hers and Bill's-flocked to Obama. Two days earlier, John Lewis had switched his endors.e.m.e.nt from Hillary to her opponent. It was painful for Clinton, but she gave a free pa.s.s to black elected officials. She understood their position, the pressure they were under, the threats (which the Clintons kept hearing about) that they would be hit with primary-election challenges if they didn't toe the Obama line.

But people such as Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia were another story. Hillary and Rockefeller were friends, she'd thought; they had fought side by side through the health care war of the early nineties. Now Rockefeller was telling Clinton he was backing Obama because his children were jazzed about him. Hillary had heard that explanation before. Was it simply an excuse? Or was it actually true? She couldn't decide which was more pathetic.

Even if Clinton won Ohio and Texas, her only route to the nomination was by way of the superdelegates. She had to make them understand, had to make them see. She spent the final days before the primaries lashing out at Obama, trying to render him unacceptable. Her campaign drilled him over Rezko, whose corruption trial began that week. They thumped him over his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, caught telling the Canadian government that Obama's anti-NAFTA stance was merely posturing. Hillary herself handed the likely Republican nominee a choice sound bite to use against her rival in the fall.