By Michael H. Cottman

Quietly, a number of aides to Sen. Hillary Clinton are packing their personal belongings, sending out resumes - some to the Obama campaign - and heading home after months on the trail as Clinton's struggling presidential campaign draws to a close.

On Tuesday, as the final votes are tallied in Montana and South Dakota - the last two Democratic primaries - Sen. Barack Obama will get close to the 2,118 delegates needed to secure the presidential nomination and is expecting a number of superdelegates to help put him over the top. Obama needs less than 30 delegates to wrap up the nomination.

Democratic party leaders are working behind closed doors to negotiate a graceful exit for Clinton who is nearing the end of a divisive campaign that has left bitter feelings and mistrust in both campaigns. Starting today, a number of superdelegates - including U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third highest-ranking legislator in Congress - will begin to announce their support for Obama. One superdelegate who is supporting Clinton told me that he will switch to Obama this week and expects others to do the same.

Obama said there are numerous superdelegates who are private supporters but wanted to respect the process by not endorsing Obama until the final primaries were done.

Sources say Clinton may suspend her campaign this week as more congressional leaders rally around Obama. The question is whether she will concede the race and endorse Obama. There is bad blood between the Obama and Clinton campaign and it will take a lot of work to sort through the anger. Obama says he's ready to meet Clinton anytime, anywhere but it's unclear whether Clinton is emotionally prepared to meet with Obama to discuss her role as a surrogate.

One Democratic leader and superdelegate told me that he has received more than 1,000 e-mails since Saturday, many of them angry notes from Clinton supporters who are threatening to either vote for Republican Sen. John McCain in November, or to sit out the election and not support Obama unless Clinton is Obama's running mate.

Perhaps the most difficult decision for Obama in the days ahead is whether to offer Clinton a place on the ticket. There are many Democratic insiders who would like to see an Obama-Clinton ticket - and there are many who don't. Privately, a number of Democratic insiders say they are concerned that Clinton may attempt to strong arm her way onto the ticket as Obama's vice presidential running mate.

"I would like to see Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential candidate," U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan told me. "I just don't want to see her married to Bill if it happens."

Bill Clinton, Conyers said, brings drama to the ticket. He can't be controlled, Conyers said, and his rhetoric often results in controversy. Take yesterday, for example. Clinton apologized for comments he made about Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum who wrote a critical piece about Clinton in the magazine, saying the former president has been seeing a lot of women on the campaign trail this year. Clinton called Purdum "sleazy," "slimy," and a "scumbag." Not exactly presidential language when campaigning for his wife in South Dakota.

And Clinton has angered many African Americans during the past few months with his tirades.

"Much of Clinton's behavior on the campaign trail this year has been so maladroit as to constitute malpractice: his blowups at television reporters, his derisive dismissal of Obama's unwavering anti-war stance as a 'fairy tale,' and most of all his denigrating comparison of Obama's performance in the South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson's victories there two decades ago," Purdum wrote.

It's these kinds of outbursts that give some Democrats pause when talking about an Obama-Clinton ticket.

Said Conyers: "It's him, not her. She can fire anyone on her staff, but she can't fire him."

As for Hillary Clinton, even with aides telling her she can't win the nomination, she remains feisty to the end.

Her surrogates, like strategist James Carville, insisted Tuesday that if she wins both the South Dakota and Montana primaries "it will be one of the greatest upsets" in American politics and Clinton could get some superdelegates to reconsider.

Who could have written this script? -- that a little-known black senator from Illinois could take on the powerful Clinton political machine, wage a mega-million-dollar campaign against Hillary Clinton, the woman many thought would be crowned as the nominee back in February.

For the Clinton braintrust -- campaign manager Terry McAullife, strategist Mark Penn, advisor Carville, and the Clintons -- either they didn't see Obama coming, they understimated his appeal and ability to energize an electorate, or were too arrogant to believe that Obama could compete on a national stage.

Or all of the above. 

In any case, Bill Clinton told supporters in South Dakota it's come down to this: "This may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind."