The moment that tells you everything about Peter Kunhardt’s three-part HBO documentary Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union comes midway through the second installment. Barack Obama has won the 2008 Iowa caucuses. Hillary Clinton has won the New Hampshire primary. As the race for the Democratic nomination heats up, we see two clips of Bill Clinton saying, apparently about Obama’s candidacy, “This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale.”

Although powerful Democrats like then–majority leader Harry Reid had encouraged Obama to run, his victory in Iowa was shocking. Hillary Clinton was one of the biggest names in US politics, and she’d been laying the groundwork for her run for a very long time. She was elected to the Senate in 2000, when she was still First Lady. That year, reporters were already asking her whether she would run for president in 2004. She ruled it out, but in a way that left open the possibility that she would throw her hat in the ring in 2008.

During her second year in the Senate, Clinton voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. The same year, as an Illinois state senator, Obama spoke at an antiwar rally in Chicago. It was a pretty wishy-washy speech. He said the United Nations inspectors should be given time to do their job. He emphasized four different times that he wasn’t opposed to “all wars.” Nevertheless, he said that “an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and strong international support” would be a “dumb war.”