Anatomy of what will be an Obama nomination victory

Green is director, Institute for Politics at Roosevelt University Chicago and Schaumburg

As the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination battle winds down (despite Hillary Clinton's massive West Virginia victory) I would like to present "eight" key steps to Barack Obama's apparent nomination victory.

• Summer 2007 -- In the multicandidate debate at Soldier Field sponsored by organized labor, most of the Democratic candidates seemed in awe of Clinton. She oozed confidence while the others, including Obama, appeared shaky. However, my notes from the debate mentioned that Clinton generated little positive passion about her candidacy -- rather, she played on her experience and the inevitability of her nomination victory.

• Late 2007 -- Obama's fundraising machine was matching the Clinton money machine and doing it by generating smaller contributions from many more contributors.

• Later in 2007 -- A Clinton insider leaked a memo suggesting that she should skip the Iowa caucus. A huge strategic and tactical error. For the first time her campaign showed uncertainty and weakness -- it forced her to deny the memo and to redouble her efforts in Iowa. It demonstrated future organizational shortcomings in caucus states and perhaps most damaging it angered many Iowa Democrats who view their first-in-the-nation nomination battle as a constitutional right. By finishing third behind Obama and John Edwards, Clinton was placed on the defensive and lost her only real campaign theme -- inevitability.

• Her New Hampshire primary victory a week later was the first of her comebacks -- on the same night Obama unleashed the race card delivering one of his few speeches directly aimed at the black voter, especially in South Carolina. His "Yes We Can" speech was a message that black voters should know his fight with Clinton was a real contest and that they could be part of history by joining his candidacy. From this speech on the black vote was his alone.

• Post-New Hampshire debates saw the dwindling Democratic presidential field concentrate their firepower on Clinton. Obama and Edwards double-teamed her every chance they could claiming they represented "political change" while she was tied to the "political past". Being the first serious woman presidential contender in the nation's history was deemed by many Democrats as not good enough to be considered a change agent. Clinton, no longer having the inevitability issue working for her, clung to her experience as a defense -- which of course only reinforced the Obama/Edwards attack.

• Obama routed Clinton in South Carolina-- 55 percent to 26 percent -- with overwhelming black support.

• Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. The second dramatic Clinton comeback -- she swept all big states except Illinois. Most honest pundits called the now two- person Clinton-Obama contest a virtual tie in pledged delegates and popular vote.

• The rest of February -- the turning point -- where Clinton likely lost the nomination. Obama ran the table on Clinton, winning the Louisiana, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and Wisconsin primaries and Nebraska, Washington, Maine and Hawaii caucuses. Obama built a huge lead in popular vote and more importantly in delegates.

From March 1 to now the nomination tussle between these two warriors has rested on how long Hillary can stay in the match. Her comeback wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania and now West Virginia have kept her in the game but have done little to close her pledged delegate gap against Obama. Why? The Democrats strange system of delegate proportionality (no winner-take-all states) makes it tough to impossible to stage a real political comeback. In the end- despite all the rhetoric about change- it will be about old politics, with the best-funded and best-organized candidate emerging as the apparent Democratic presidential nominee. Even Clinton's "Unsinkable Molly Brown" comebacks can't overcome this cold reality.