For more than a month, her endgame was a mystery. When would she drop out? Under what circumstances? Why not sooner rather than later?

A day after losing the Democratic nominating fight but not formally bowing out, Sen. Hillary Clinton said she will suspend her campaign by the end of this week, and pledged to help Sen. Barack Obama capture the White House.

Clinton plans to thank supporters at a Washington D.C. event Saturday, but she got a head start in an e-mail the campaign sent out early Thursday, announcing the former First Lady’s planned withdrawal from the race.

By suspending instead of dropping out altogether, Clinton technically remains a candidate, entitled to keep pledged delegates and district-level delegates. Mitt Romney also exited this way on the GOP side.

In a campaign of near-deaths and premature obituaries, Clinton battled all the way into early June - though her hopes were essentially dashed May 6.

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Cynics and opponents criticized him for offering rhetoric, and not solutions. But month after month, millions of voters believed.

When Illinois Sen. Barack Obama declared his candidacy in February 2007, he was an obscure, first-term senator facing an steep, uphill fight against a candidate considered to be the party’s inevitable choice.

Many questions were raised about Obama’s experience. Did this 46-year-old junior senator really have what it takes to become the Democratic nominee? Sure, he can give a great speech, but what does he stand for?

Then something crazy happened. Obama’s message of hope, change and national unity resonated in Iowa, where he won the first-in-the-nation caucuses January 3.

The floodgates opened, and we were in a race for the ages.

In the weeks that followed Iowa, a wide field of Democratic candidates dwindled to a mere two. Barack Obama, thought to be a long-shot, was among them.

He and Sen. Hillary Clinton fought to virtual draws in the early January primary states, then went full-tilt on Super Tuesday - the February 5 day of reckoning, 22 elections that were supposed to confirm Clinton’s destiny.

Didn’t happen.

A string of Barack Obama victories from Connecticut to Utah kept the race more or less tied, enabling him to run the table for the rest of February, gaining a lead that - while challenged and reduced - could not be overtaken.

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This isn’t a new story, but with the primary season drawing to a close this evening and the finish line in sight, it’s worth revisiting. Earlier this spring, Bloomberg News got its hands on a detailed Barack Obama campaign spreadsheet.

Compiled after Super Tuesday, February 5, the document projected the results of the primary and caucus contests the rest of the way.

The campaign noted that the spreadsheet contains several scenarios, and this one just happened to be the first. But take a look at it …

These Barack Obama campaign projections were not spot-on, but they were pretty close - and within the data are a number of interesting facts:

• Since Super Tuesday, the Obama campaign only called two races wrong - narrowly giving the Maine caucuses to Clinton February 10 (he won 59-40 percent) and chalking up Indiana for Obama (he lost 51-49) May 6.
• The margins of victory projected for both candidates, by and large, have fallen short of the actual results - ultimately to Barack Obama’s benefit, given the string of routs he posted in February. Those huge delegate margins gave him an insurmountable advantage, despite several rough patches his campaign has endured since.
• The sheet concluded that Obama would finish on top, narrowly, in pledged delegates, while remaining behind in superdelegates. He has since overtaken Clinton and built his lead in the latter column, as well.
• If Montana and South Dakota fall into the Obama column today, Clinton will have won only eight of 27 races since February 5.

Basically, despite losing states they would have loved to win, the Obama campaign saw this coming months ago - and had long planned on competing in every single race, whereas Hillary Clinton, the supposed candidate of inevitability, banked on a Super Tuesday knockout that never came.

Forty-two.

It’s the answer to the mystery of the universe, according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and for Sen. Barack Obama, it’s the last milepost - the light at the end of the tunnel that is this historic Democratic presidential race.

After 17 months of campaigning, numerous momentum shifts, scandals, rules committee hearings, wrangling for support among insiders and more than 35 million votes, Obama needs just 42 more delegates.

That would finally give the 46-year-old Illinois Senator the 2,118 he needs for the Democratic presidential nomination, leaving little room for rival Sen. Hillary Clinton to make the dwindling argument that the party should choose her.

Although she may still try to halt his coronation, it appears the question of what’s next for Clinton may soon being answered: concession.

Despite waging one of the most formidable campaigns for the presidency in U.S. history, the former First Lady has simply run out of options.

The last two primaries of 2008 - South Dakota and Montana - take place today, but with just 31 delegates at stake combined, even two expected victories for Obama won’t be enough to put him over the top.

Enter the superdelegates.

After more than 50 elections, Barack Obama is closing in on victory.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House Majority Whip, James Clyburn of South Carolina, the top ranking African-American in Congress who has been neutral throughout, announced that he plans on supporting Obama in the race.

“I believe the nomination of Senator Obama is our Party’s best chance for victory in November, and our nation’s best hope for much needed change,” said Clyburn, the source of one of the top quotes from this year when he told Bill Clinton to “chill” on Obama before the South Carolina primary.

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Democratic leaders have addressed the lingering issue of the rogue Florida and Michigan primaries, but the saga is far from over.

Both states will send delegates to the August convention in Denver after all, albeit with half the votes each instead of full ones each.

The decision preserved the bulk of Sen. Barack Obama’s lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now 2,070-1,915, with 2,118 needed to win.

But supporters of Clinton are particularly angry that the Michigan decision gave her rival, Obama, delegates they believe he did not earn.

If significant numbers of Clinton supporters remain angry and unwilling to vote for Obama, the likely nominee, his prospects for election in November could be damaged. The question is how Senator Clinton handles herself going forward.

She won Sunday’s Democratic primary in Puerto Rico, posting another huge margin of victory - 34 percent and 140,000 votes - but there is likely nothing she can do to halt Obama’s momentum toward the nomination.

Clinton also claims a lead in the overall popular vote this primary season, though that is a highly questionable statement, as it requires counting the banned primaries in both Florida and Michigan, while at the same time not counting several caucus states where results have not been tabulated:

• If the Florida primary is counted, but not Michigan, where Obama did not appear on the ballot, and no caucuses, he leads 17,389,116-17,364,592.

• If all primary results including Florida and Michigan are counted, and not the caucus votes, Clinton leads the popular vote 17,461,845-17,244,762.

• A second scenario, which counts both of the barred primaries but adds an estimate of caucus-goers, Obama leads Clinton 17,961,368-17,916,763.

In short, it’s historically and remarkably close - but Clinton is skating on perilously thin ice in trumpeting her popular vote argument.

Montana and South Dakota close out the primary season tomorrow. Polling is sparse, but given what data we have, and Obama’s past success in the west, we expect him to win both states by relatively easy margins.

After the Puerto Rico victory, Clinton said she will take the race for the Democratic presidential nomination “a day at a time” and is reviewing all options as she moves forward in her historic, but turbulent campaign.

What’s her next move? That, perhaps only the Senator herself knows. But a handful of Hillary Clinton quotes yesterday and in recent days make it all too clear that she has no intention of bowing out gracefully.

As we reported yesterday, the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee reinstated all Florida and Michigan delegates.

Each gets only half a vote, however, as a penalty for those states moving their primaries earlier than the party had approved (February 5).

Here’s a look at how this shapes up numerically:

• The move narrowed front-runner Sen. Barack Obama’s lead over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, but not by a very significant margin. Based on the DNC’s decision, she received 87 pledged delegates to his 63.

• The committee’s ruling gave Clinton 105 pledged delegates from Florida and 69 from Michigan. Halved, that gives her a total of 87.

• Obama received 67 pledged delegates from Florida and 59 from Michigan. Halved, that amounts to 63 delegates.

• This leaves Obama ahead in overall delegates 2,051-1,877.

• The magic number needed to win is now 2,118.

If all of the delegates from Florida and Michigan had been granted a full vote, Hillary Clinton still would have trailed Barack Obama.

But this decision was greeted by most as an acceptable compromise - as it should be, as the DNC created this mess in the first place, and changing the rules back after changing them in the first place (and no one competed in the two states) would have been absurd. Saturday’s decision was the only logical outcome.

Will the results change the story? Absolutely not. So is it over, then? Not remotely. Clinton - unhappy with the Michigan result - can appeal any decision made by the committee, dragging the dispute all the way to Denver if she so chooses.

It’s sad but true in this convoluted system that the superdelegates must end this.

After the final three primaries are held (Puerto Rico today, Montana and South Dakota Tuesday), 86 more pledged delegates will be apportioned. Needing 63 of those to clinch the nomination, Obama won’t quite get there.

A new wave of superdelegate support (are you listening, Al Gore?) would put him over the top. Let’s hope it happens sooner rather than later.

So, Hillary Clinton wants to seat every delegate from Florida and Michigan, huh?

As the leaders of the Democratic party meet to decide the fate of votes in those two states today, it’s worth remembering a certain pledge Clinton signed on September 1, 2007.

Before she defeated Barack Obama in each of the aforementioned states (narrowly edging a list of “Uncommitted” candidates 55% to 40% in Michigan) - and before she was mathematically eliminated from winning the delegate and popular vote count without them - Clinton was content to not seat these delegates.

Take a look:

In light of this pledge, voters must ask themselves: How would Clinton react if roles were reversed?

Can you imagine the uproar her campaign would cause if Obama was desperately seeing to count delegates that each side had agreed to disenfranchise last year?

Mock the Democrats all you’d like for the mess this has led to, but burn the video above into your brain. Hillary Clinton is falsely attempting to sound like the voice of democracy, when the reality is that she’s willing to go back on her own signed word just to remain relevant in this race.

Florida and Michigan. Michigan and Florida.

For weeks now, these two states - whose delegates have not been counted as a result of their decision to move up their Democratic primaries against the wishes/rules of the national committee - have been in the news almost as much as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton themselves.

Today, though, a decision** will finally come down on how to seat the uncounted delegates in those regions. Democratic activists are holding a hearing on the issue as we write this.

Clinton’s campaign, of course, is calling for the results of the states’ primaries to be honored and the delegates awarded. Such an approach would help her chip away at Obama’s lead in pledged delegates because she handily won both states, although there are two problems with this argument:

1. Obama did not campaign in Florida in January, leading to a Clinton victory that was more a cause of name recognition than an actual democratic election process;
2. Obama’s name was not even on the ballot in Michigan; moreover, 40% of voters actually favored no candidate at all (aka “Uncommitted“) over Hillary. Seriously. Think about that for a moment.

Dozens of sign-toting, chanting protesters gathered outside the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, the site of Saturday’s events, to have their say on what the decision should be.

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws panel met behind closed doors for five hours Friday night, emerging at 1:30 a.m. Saturday without an agreement.

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Probably not enough to enable Sen. Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic party’s nomination for president, but any action by the party on the two rule-breaking states should benefit her more than Sen. Barack Obama.

The Democratic Party is likely to meet Florida and Michigan halfway when it comes to seating the delegates at the Democratic national convention.

Such a move may help Clinton close the delegate gap with Obama. However, it is still unlikely it would enable her to overtake him.

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on Saturday in Washington to consider what to do with Florida and Michigan.

Both state parties were told that they would not be represented at all when the Democrats officially nominate a presidential candidate in Denver.

Not shockingly, Hillary Clinton and her supporters have been pressing for a compromise that seats as many delegates from the two states as possible.

About 600,000 people voted in Michigan and 1.7 million in Florida. Clinton won decisively in both states, though Obama and other candidates had their names taken off the Michigan ballot. He did appear on Florida’s ballot.

In addition to deciding how many (or any) Florida and Michigan delegates to seat, the rules committee must determine how the delegates allocated.

Various formulas have been suggested, most of which would give Clinton more delegates than Obama, who currently leads 1,978-1,780.

If Florida and Michigan weren’t counted in the race, 2,026 would clinch the nomination for Obama. The number rises if those states are seated.

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Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will officially capture the Democratic presidential nomination soon after next week’s final primaries, the Illinois senator’s top campaign aide, David Axelrod, is predicting.

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Obama’s campaign adviser said that after the June 3 primaries in South Dakota and Montana, Obama will “be at the number we need to claim the nomination.”

“We’re very close now,” Axelrod said.

“When the primaries end, I think, we’ll be where we need to be. We’ll be at the number we need to claim the nomination.”

Barack Obama is closing in on victory over Hillary Clinton.

Obama is just 52 delegates shy of clinching the Democratic nomination while Clinton is 246 short. There are still 86 pledged delegates up for grabs in the remaining three contests - Puerto Rico, where Clinton is favored, votes June 1, ahead of South Dakota and Montana, where Obama has the edge.

Over 200 superdelegates are still publicly undeclared.

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