Hillary's in.

It's official. Did she announce early because of Barack Obama?

Her advisers this week have rejected the idea, spreading in Democratic circles, that she would rush to announce as a way to overshadow Mr. Obama, who has engendered intense Democratic interest as a steady critic of the Iraq war and as a skilled orator who comes across as a nonpartisan and unifying force in politics.

Like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is also poised to make history. If successful in the primaries, he would be the first African-American to win the Democratic nomination. He is her only real rival at this point in drawing huge crowds of voters at political stops and driving the 2008 political discussion in the media.

This past week alone has shown the ways that the Clinton and Obama candidacies are intersecting: He announced Tuesday and dominated political coverage in the media; she swept in on Wednesday, fresh from her trip to Iraq, and appeared on the network morning shows to talk about the war (pushing the news of his candidacy to second place); later that day, he issued a statement embracing a cap on American troops in Iraq, hours after she had made a similar proposal. And they are now both jockeying for donors in New York, Hollywood, and elsewhere.