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

Even many of the New York senator's supporters thought she would say anything to win, or be anyone.

These are some of the paradoxes and missed opportunities that will be examined by the cottage industry sure to arise to explore the what-ifs of Clinton's campaign.

Special coverage: 2008 US Presidential Election Related readings:  Obama overtakes Clinton in superdelegate endorsements  Obama and Clinton may join forces in election  Obama open to Clinton as possible running mate  Clinton under greater pressure to quit nomination race  Obama wins N.C. primary, Clinton wins Indiana

By now, it's common knowledge that she planned to wrap up the nomination in early February. It was a reasonable assumption in 2007 but there wasn't much of a Plan B when that didn't work out in 2008.

"Her inevitability was based on a concept that no one would have the gumption or the resources or drive to get in - anyone with serious chances," Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic chairman and Barack Obama supporter, said after her Super Tuesday strategy fell short.

"They had an inevitability strategy, which was sort of a political Maginot line. It was illusionary. You just went around it, and, you know, Barack Obama did that."

David Gergen, a senior adviser to a succession of presidents from both parties, thought she was not well served by her team, citing "elements of malpractice in this campaign."

Any failed campaign is a combination of what the fallen did wrong, what the victor did right and happenstance.

Did her loose cannon of a husband shoot a hole through their own hull?

Did Florida and Michigan help to blow it for her in their rogue rush to hold early primaries against party rules, a move that sidelined delegates from two big states open to her?

Questions like that go into the same file with Ralph Nader-2000. Pundits will chew them over without ever being able to prove the answer, just as no one knows for sure whether Nader's candidacy robbed Al Gore of the presidency.

Clinton was on a springtime roll until Tuesday, when she lost big in North Carolina and barely prevailed in Indiana. Obama has swallowed several worse days than that and cruised on.

It loomed so large for Clinton because she had fallen so far behind in the contests of winter. One of the striking features of the drawn-out Democratic race is that so much damage was done to her chances in such a short spell.

After Obama's big win in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, a reporter asked Clinton as she campaigned in New Hampshire whether she felt Obama was a phenomenon that she just couldn't overcome, no matter what she did.

Clinton didn't acknowledge it publicly at the time, but months later said privately that she often thought of that question and sometimes felt it had some truth.

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