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

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton began her presidential quest armed with talent, tenacity, fame, money, connections and a team that knew how to win.

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaks at a Mothers Day fundraiser in New York Saturday, May 10, 2008. [Agencies]

Many people believed her victory in the Democratic nomination battle was a sure thing. Her ultimate failing may have been in believing it, too.

Clinton had one big problem out of the gate: 40 percent or more of Americans said they'd never vote for her. She was too polarizing. It's love her or hate her.

Clinton powered through that hurdle in state after state, showing grit that earned her the valuable political currency of being merely admired.

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White men, blue-collar workers, socially conservative Democrats - however you slice the electorate, she brought many of those people to her side, over time, and took the edge off the Hillary haters.

Voters, whose No. 1 concern had been ending the Iraq war, started worrying more about the economy. That was a switch from his strength to hers.

Despite all that, her campaign is on the ropes. Clinton is fighting on for a prize few believe she can win anymore, barring some game-changing development.

Clinton's fortunes rose and fell like a fever chart: She was down in Iowa, up in New Hampshire, down in South Carolina. Then, after a roughly even finish with Barack Obama on Super Tuesday, she suffered a string of unanswered losses that, almost before Clinton noticed, put Obama so far ahead in the delegate hunt that all the big-state victories she piled up couldn't close the delegate gap.

Clinton once said she is the most famous person no one knows, meaning Americans don't really get her.

Sixteen months after she opened her campaign sitting on a couch in a cozy online video, it's questionable whether people ever discovered the authentic Clinton.

Is she the whiskey-downing pit bull of Indiana? The near-tears softy of New Hampshire?

The technocrat of health care reform or the populist who dismisses policy wonks as out-of-touch elitists?

"They know that I can make decisions," she said in New Hampshire, "but I also want them to know I'm a real person."

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