3, Obama won the Iowa caucuses, drawing strong support from young voters and those angered by Clinton's Senate vote to authorize the Iraq war. It would bat clean-up, at the end of January, after Iowa, New Hampshire and caucuses in Nevada. After the '04 trial run, the Democratic National Committee, in a nod to the importance of black voters, decided to make the state's primary one of four officially sanctioned lead-off contests in 2008. South Carolina’s primary would enjoy even more stature this time around. (“Marching together for now,” Glenn Thrush, Newsday, March 5, 2007.) 'Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma,' he said. Obama, for his part, told a church audience that he was the 'offspring' of the civil rights movement. That Clinton was accompanied by her husband, making one of his first public appearances with her since she began her campaign, seemed telling. The importance of the black vote was underscored in March 2007, when Clinton and Obama attended the annual commemoration of the 'Bloody Sunday' clashes in Selma, Alabama, between police and civil rights marchers in 1965.

Polling also suggested a gender gap among African Americans, with Clinton running stronger with black women than men. An ABC News/Washington Post survey in January 2007, just before Obama declared his candidacy, put him 24 points behind Clinton overall - and 40 points behind among black voters. The coalition Obama sought to build required deep African Americans support, which early polling suggested would not be automatic. (“Obama thrills blacks who see shot at history,” Jill Lawrence, USA Today, Jan. There was a sense, as civil rights veteran Roger Wilkins put it, that he was the first black candidate with an actual chance of winning. As he entered the '08 race, Obama's name recognition was wide and so was his personal popularity. His keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention, which framed his own unlikely life story as a celebration of the American dream, had struck an optimistic public nerve that defied ideological barriers. Obama, meanwhile, was a new national star, with the potential to go further than any black politician had ever gone in America.

Epic Duel