The Democratic presidential race ended unofficially at 1:09 this morning. That's when the television networks began declaring Senator Hillary Clinton the winner of Indiana.

But Clinton will not be the Democratic nominee. Her tiny Indiana victory -- preceded by a huge defeat in delegate-rich North Carolina -- was too little, too late to change the fundamental dynamics of the campaign.

Barack Obama will win the nomination, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, he will be the first African American Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Up until last night, there was an "open secret" in some media and political circles. They knew that Hillary Clinton had already lost. The media and politicians figured out weeks ago that Clinton had little or no chance to win the nomination. Last night they finally began to tell the rest of the country.

Clinton trails Obama in pledged delegates, total delegates, number of states won, and in the popular vote -- with or without Florida and Michigan.  In the next few days, she may also trail him in superdelegates -- the one holdout of the establishment she had hoped might give her the nomination. But soon the undeclared superdelegates will be ready to step up. The superdelegate train is leaving the station, and the senator from New York will not be in the conductor's seat when the governors, senators, members of Congress and party leaders begin to line up for Obama over the coming weeks.

I have to give Hillary Clinton credit. She put up a strong fight -- and she may still fight -- but she is not dumb, and even she must realize that she has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

Clinton's fatal flaws

Clinton has been a formidable adversary against Obama, but two fatal flaws doomed her presidential bid -- the tone of her campaign and the message of her campaign.

As a former Clinton White House aide, I have said repeatedly -- and I still believe -- that the Clintons are good people. A photo of me standing with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office hangs above my desk as I write these words. 

But since Hillary Clinton started losing her lead last December, the tone of her campaign, unfortunately, has moved into the gutter. In the past few months, both Bill and Hillary Clinton did and said things that a Democrat ought not to do against another Democrat in a primary election.

When Hillary Clinton said that Republican candidate John McCain had a lifetime of experience and Barack Obama only had a speech, she crossed the line. And when the Bosnia story threatened to derail her campaign, she crossed the line again by dredging up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy against Obama.

When Bill Clinton attacked Obama's Iraq message as a "fairy tale" and dismissed his South Carolina victory as a racial victory, he too crossed the line. Former presidents are not supposed to attack promising young candidates in the party -- even when their spouses are running for office against them. Bill Clinton's role was -- or should have been -- to promote his wife, not to attack her opponent.

Clinton's second fatal flaw was her message. Here she is, the first woman in history with a serious chance to win the White House, and she decides to run as the establishment candidate instead of the candidate of change. So when Obama's "change" message began to take off at the beginning of the year, she criticized her rival for pushing "false hopes."

Democrats have always believed in hope, and Clinton should have known better than to attack someone for believing in it. Instead of criticizing Obama's dream, Clinton should have spelled out her own. She should have co-opted his message of hope and optimism and used it to her advantage. As the first woman president, Clinton could be the perfect agent of change. But it took her far too long to appreciate the intensity and the significance of the desire for change that has been sweeping the country.

Lessons from the past, and for the future

The Clintons learned their national political lessons from the same place I did -- the school of hard knocks. I worked on my first presidential campaign in 1988, when Mike Dukakis was defeated by race-baiting, flag-waving GOP demagogues who demonized the Massachusetts governor and made the campaign into a debate over Willie Horton and the pledge of allegiance. The lessons that many of us learned from that experience were to respond to every attack immediately and effectively, to stay on message, and to communicate values as well as policies.

By 1992, the need for a "rapid response" to the enemy was what inspired our "war room" in the Clinton campaign. Dukakis didn't fight back, and we were determined not to let that ever happen again.

But the "war room" accounted for only a small part of the Clinton campaign's success. The most important ingredient was the message of hope. That's what Hillary Clinton seemed to forget along the way. After being attacked relentlessly and unfairly by the "vast right-wing conspiracy" in the 1990s, the Clintons learned to fight fire with fire. "The problem is," said Senator Obama last month, "that's the kind of politics we've been accustomed to, and I think Senator Clinton learned the wrong lesson, because she's adopted the same tactic."

Obama is right. Democrats want a president who can fight, but we also want a president who can inspire. Clinton has certainly shown us that she can punch and push, but she never really showed us that she could push us to dream.

As a young political upstart in 1992, Bill Clinton got elected president by selling a message of hope that Barack Obama now promotes as his own. The tragic irony is that the Clintons will be defeated 16 years later by a new young political upstart employing their own words and strategy against them. It is a stunning fall from grace for two gifted politicians who have dominated the Democratic Party for nearly two decades and who, just over a year ago, boasted the most powerful, politically-connected and well-financed campaign machine in party history.

For all the bumps and bruises he endured along the way, Barack Obama might want to thank Hillary Clinton for preparing him for the race ahead. Surely it was not Clinton's intention to help Obama by attacking him, but in the process of doing so, Clinton has made Obama a much tougher, stronger and more resilient candidate than he would have been without her. Now he must allow her to leave the race with some sort of dignity that enables the two of them -- and their supporters -- to begin to heal and unite the party. Nobody is going to force Clinton to quit her campaign -- nor should they -- but she knows what she must do, eventually.

And so, as the Clinton campaign awakens to the reality of inevitable defeat, they must surely understand two things. First, their days are numbered and will soon come to an end. And second, the real opponent is not Barack Obama, but John McCain.