Barack Obama is, in all likelihood, going to become the Democratic nominee tonight, or shortly after tonight.

Overtaking Hillary is nothing to sneeze at, and what’s particularly striking is how little serious, competitive campaigning experience Obama had before this cycle effectively began in January 2007.

In 1996, he won by getting all of his Democratic primary opponents thrown off the ballot by challenging their nominating petitions. He never faced a major challenger to his state legislative seat.

In 2000, he challenged Rep. Bobby Rush in the Democratic primary and was blown out, losing by 30 percentage points.

In 2004, he won the Democratic primary by a wide margin, helped along when one of his well-funded Democratic rivals’ divorce records were unsealed and the public learned that Blair Hull’s second wife had once been granted an order of protection from him.

His most likely Republican opponent dropped out after his divorce records were unsealed, revealing that Jack Ryan wanted to do sexually unusual things with his wife Jeri Ryan.

The Republican Party could not persuade Mike Ditka, among others, to throw his hat in the ring, and turned to Alan Keyes, who until then had been living in Maryland. Keyes promptly campaigned on a platform that declared Vice President Cheney’s daughter a “selfish hedonist.”

Based on this meager experience in hard-fought races, one would expect Obama to get eaten alive going up against the woman who stood beside Bill Clinton in two successful presidential campaigns and four and a half terms as Governor of Arkansas and two victorious Senate campaigns in New York. Tonight is, whatever comes next, a victory to savor for the Obamas.

But all things considered, Obama hasn’t quite been the same campaigner since his 11 state winning streak came to an end. His problem with key demographics — white working class, elderly, union members, Catholics, Jews — became clear after Ohio and Texas, and since then, he’s lost Pennsylvania by almost 10 percent and been blown out in West Virginia and Kentucky, and his Puerto Rico numbers are an ominous sign for his appeal among Latino voters. He kept Indiana close, and won North Carolina by a wide margin. Oregon went well for him. But she’s won enough votes to make the popular vote, by just about any count, almost a tie. One Republican strategist notes that Obama hasn’t improved despite considerable efforts to reach out to these voter groups, and says Obama ends the primary with “a demographic problem the likes of which I’ve never seen.”

I suspect that when John McCain speaks tonight in Louisiana, he will attempt to frame the general election debate. After a long wait, here it comes.