(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-12 09:53

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.

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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.

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.

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