How Obama won nomination; how he can win election

WASHINGTON - Fresh beat familiar. Change beat experience. And not-Hillary beat Hillary.

Maybe it took someone new like Barack Obama -- age 46, a relative newcomer to Washington -- to toss aside the old political calculus and take on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In any other year, it might have been political suicide. This year was different.

Tired of war and the ways of Washington, voters wanted change. Change? Obama offered nothing less than a chance to embrace history -- a candidate who could become the nation's first black president, pledging a different way of doing business in the nation's capital.