Afternoon:
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The great Democrat infight goes on. But as the final results of Super Tuesday's primaries pour in today, it is the outcome of the Republican nomination race that might well prove decisive to the outcome of the presidential election.
The focus on the fate of the Democrats has been lopsided. There is no guaranteed ticket for them to the White House. John McCain, the apostate Republican who dared oppose George Bush on the conduct of the war on terror, has shown that he is well capable of getting in the way.
As Mr McCain swept the north and California, Mike Huckabee, the preacher and best orator in the race after Barack Obama, made a clean sweep of the southern states to guarantee him vice-presidential contention. Out of the gloom of the late Bush years, a Republican slate has emerged that looks - potentially - electable.
It is a mighty comeback for McCain, a senator who has survived one real near-death experience in his youth in Vietnam - and a political one last summer when his campaign flagged and his ratings dropped to single figures. He thanked supporters who stuck with him "through thick and thin", adding pointedly, "and you know, it really was thin".
In many ways, he is the most intriguing candidate in this White House race: a politician who has thrived as an individual outside his party's recent orthodoxies.
That has earned him a wide appeal to independents - and even wavering Democrat voters. He was, and is, a hawk who defends both the war on terror and Iraq but has been early, forthright and consistent in his opposition to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition and torture. He opposed the signature Bush tax cuts and is relatively liberal on abortion. His main enemies now are within the Republican hierarchy, who do not accept him as a "true" conservative - but have little other choice.
It does say something rather impressive about the US political system, so often derided as superficial, that it can resurrect as a serious candidate a man the spin doctors would never have invented.
The next US election is, obviously, about change. What has not yet been defined is what sort of change America wants.
Obama offers an unambiguous generational shift and the earliest possible withdrawal from the Iraq quagmire. Mrs Clinton has many strengths: maturity, moderation and the accumulated political nous of her White House years (a co-presidency in all but name).
The more hostile the focus is on the murkier side of the Clintons' past, the better Mr McCain looks. Famously, he refused early release as a Vietnamese prisoner of war when offered an escape because his father was a senior naval figure. On the "character" question which attends every presidential race, he starts way ahead.
So far, the Democrats and Republicans in this race have refrained from attacking each other. From today, the gloves are off. One of the major drawbacks for the Democrats in having no clear winner on Super Tuesday is that the Republican party can begin its presidential quest in earnest while its opponents are still locked in an internecine battle about who should lead it. "We will spend the next month talking to ourselves while McCain starts his conversation with the country," says one Clinton strategist.
Mr McCain described himself as a "happy warrior" - and the emphasis is on the warrior part. Although he has a strong bi-partisan record on Capitol Hill and has been complimentary about Obama, both the Democrat candidates have reason to fear his teeth as an attack dog.
Senior members of the Obama team acknowledge that the race for the White House is now turning serious - and that the benign climate between the two parties cannot last.
Insubstantiality is Mr Obama's main weakness and so far it has gone largely unexplored in the enthusiasm he has roused. Phrases like "We are the people we have been waiting for," are a mixture of the inspiring and the vacuous.
True, no one ever died of excitement at a McCain rally: but on substance, he is likely to forge a lead over Obama when it comes to substance, with a long voting record to show his mettle. Obama is now more heavily committed than ever to a speedy withdrawal from Iraq. Mr McCain has left himself the option of a slow builddown of troops. Not all his positions are popular - he is committed to a long stay in Afghanistan - but they do have the virtue of solidity.
The Hillary campaign is subdued this morning, not least because it has not vanquished Obama, but also because it is apprehensive at the prospect of McCain.
She has relied heavily on a rhetoric hostile to the Bush presidency. Mr McCain is as unlike Bush as a Republican can be, which leaves her attacks without a target and his party with its best hope of retaining the White House - always assuming that it can make its peace with a renegade son.
Her new rival allows for a continuation of moderate Right-of-centre government, while being distinct from the Bush Republicans, their failures and miasma. That blend has brought support ranging from the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to New York's popular crimebusting exmayor, Rudolf Giuliani.
Age is McCain's worst enemy. A vital 71-year-old now, he would be nearing 80 if he served two terms, which awakens anxious memories of Ronald Reagan's creeping senility in office.
His campaign adverts morph rather too easily into the adverts pharmaceutical companies put out to attract super-healthy "seniors "with their latest rejuvenating potions.
Watching two of the many "victory" speeches in the early hours this morning, the contrast was glaring: Mr McCain, with his stiffly beehived wife alongside him, Mr Obama joking about his children refusing to come on stage and responding to a wild fan's cry of "I love you" with an off-the-cuff "I love you back".
"Mac is back," chant McCain's supporters. The manner of his resurrection changes the rules of engagement for Democratic contenders, too . Super Tuesday has bequeathed an unwelcome legacy to the Democrats: the man they least want to fight.
