Sen. Barack Obama, without a doubt, has the most brilliant political strategist that our nation has ever witnessed. That strategist is David Axelrod.

Let’s take a look at what has transpired over the last 24 hours and I think you will agree with my assessment.

First, Sen. Clinton wins impressively in West Virginia last night. It was a great victory and certainly pumped a little life into a virtually dead campaign. Knowing that Obama would lose by a rather large margin last night, David Axelrod today did what any other smart political strategist would do, he trumped her win with a major and much more prominent announcement.

Knowing that today’s news cycle would be buzzing with the Clinton WV win, Axelrod coordinated the John Edwards endorsement announcement more perfectly than anyone could have ever imagined.

Here is how he did it……

Sen. Clinton did a round of interviews today with all of the major networks, boasting about her WV win last night and vowing that the race would go on. She finished up those interviews in the late afternoon, just prior to most of the major networks moving over to prime time news coverage.

What did Axelrod do? Scheduled the John Edwards endorsement just before the cable news stations went into prime news coverage, so MSNBC and CNN both covered the event live (Fox News did not air the event). This move took all of the talk off of the Clinton interviews and WV win, and put Obama and Edwards right into the prime air time. It also had every pundit on every network all over the story and talking about it for the rest of the evening, virtually moving Clinton and her win to page 23 of the news.

On top of that, Clinton scheduled a big meeting at her Washington home tonight with major supporters and financial backers to her campaign. My guess is that they were not watching cable news, and if they were, it was likely not very pleasing to have to watch the Obama/Edwards event unfold right in front of them.

Here are a few other points as to why this is brilliant timing…..

Obviously, they could have rolled Edwards out before the North Carolina primary, but they didn’t need to. There was no need to play that card with the lead that Obama had in NC. Even though that is Edward’s home state, they saved their trump card.

They could have rolled Edwards out right before West Virginia to try and close the gap. Again, they didn’t need to. Clearly there was no sense in using Edwards at that time because the gap was unlikely to change with the announcement anyway, and they would not have been able to trump the Clinton WV win.

Also something to think about…….

With the announcement coming today I believe it actually served three purposes.

1. It trumped the Clinton WV win and made Obama the prime focus of the news cycle today.
2. It gives them 6 days to now further their lead in Oregon and possibly greatly reduce their deficit in Kentucky. Edwards may actually help close the gap in Kentucky by picking up some of those white, working-class voters.
3. It now puts more pressure on superdelegates to hurry the process along and end this thing. Obama has had a steady flow of supers come in for him ever since the NC/IN primaries. Now that Edwards has endorsed, you are likely to see even more, even quicker announce support for Obama.

David Axelrod has managed to run the Obama campaign to near perfection. From building their internet base, to their 50-state voter drive, to the amazing grass-roots coalition they have built, the Obama campaign has truly, I believe, changed the face of political campaigns as we know them.

Clearly, Axelrod would say that it is not just him that deserves the compliments and I agree. Being involved in the Obama campaign myself, I have seen the insides of it and know that it is a mass amount of supporters that makes this thing happen.

However, when all is said and done, it is David Axelrod that will be remembered as the prime factor behind a campaign that has broken all facets of political records, and was truly ran with a strategy that focused on winning and taking advantage of every opportunity that presented itself, all in what would like a precisely calculated timeline.