June 05, 2008
Obama: A Victor on His Heels
By David Broder

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/obama_stumbles_into_the_genera...

WASHINGTON -- From Iowa in January through South Dakota and Montana in
June, Barack Obama has enjoyed one of the great rides in American
political history, breaking precedents and setting records along the
way. It has been an extraordinary journey, magnified, not diminished,
by the gritty, resilient performance of his main rival, Hillary Rodham
Clinton. On that journey he has given Americans the gift of a new and
hopeful chapter in our troubled racial history.

The two props that made it possible for this freshman senator, with
far more meager governmental credentials than most of the other dozen
candidates running in both parties this year, to capture the
Democratic nomination, are clear.