IN the end, Senator Hillary Clinton will come up 150 or so delegates short of getting the Democratic presidential nomination, which will now go to Senator Barack Obama.

Such a result would have been unthinkable a little over six months ago before the primary season started, when she looked liked the safest bet to clinch the nomination in decades.

Something funny happened on the plains of Iowa and amid the snows of New Hampshire, however. A new political era was born.

I was there to witness it on a freezing night on November 10 at the massive gathering of Democratic supporters at the annual Jefferson Jackson dinner in Des Moines, Iowa.

At the time the Obama buzz was just beginning, with polls showing the Illinois senator gaining surprising traction in one of the whitest states in the union.

My brother-in-law and I had gone to hear Obama earlier in the day at a nearby venue, and frankly wondered what all the fuss was about. He was low key, clearly physically tired and seemed to lack the necessary energy to galvanize his supporters who were clearly hanging on every word.

Indeed, his wife Michelle was far more impressive introducing him than Obama was in his speech. We both had the same reaction of "where's the beef?" when he finished.

In retrospect, of course, he was just saving himself for the main event later that night, when the six leading candidates for the nomination squared off against each other as 10,000 Iowans watched in the cavernous arena of the Polk County Convention Center.

It was one of those typical political events where speeches were running long and every office holder from Senator Tom Harkin to small town dog catcher were taking too much time on stage.

Even Clinton disappointed with a speech that tortured some clich� to death about turning up the heat on the Republicans. It was plain vanilla in comparison to the caviar to come.

Then Obama took the stage and delivered the speech of his life. The murmuring in the hall stopped and the crowd quieted down like a bunch of grade school kids when their teacher appears. Obama was spellbinding even to this Clinton supporter.

He attacked Democrats who were afraid of their own political identity and stated it was past time that Democrats stood up to be counted.

"Because of what Dr. King called 'the fierce urgency of now.' Because I believe that there's such a thing as being too late. And that hour is almost upon us," he said.

"Because I will never forget that the only reason that I'm standing here today is because somebody, somewhere stood up for me when it was risky. Stood up when it was hard. Stood up when it wasn't popular.

"And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world."

It was amazing stuff and the crowd loved it. Quincy Jones, the great music producer, was at my table, and halfway through the speech the Clinton staffers urgently sent for him to pose for pictures with Hillary to try and distract the media. It was clear they sensed what was happening that night too.

Next day David Yepsen, the key political commentator for the Des Moines Register called Obama's talk a "superb speech, the best of the campaign." David Broder in The Washington Post simply said it was "a thing of beauty."

Personally I was blown away too, and for the first time had an inkling of the force of nature that Obama the candidate was turning out to be.

I was still convinced Clinton would win the nomination, rather easily I thought, but that Obama was certainly an incredible new voice for the Democratic Party.

That night was the turning point in Iowa for Obama, a state he went on to win in January, putting the first crucial building block in place for his unlikely run for the White House.

This week Obama's race for the Democratic nomination inevitably culminates in victory. There was nothing inevitable back on that cold night in Iowa in the cavernous arena in Des Moines where his campaign kicked into high gear.

Obama has run an extraordinary race, and Camp Clinton can only watch and wonder about what might have been.