Hilary Clinton may still be the front runner by a whisker to win the Democratic nomination in August, but she is going to have to work very hard indeed to keep ahead of her rival Barak Obama.
After the votes were counted in this week's Super Tuesday Democratic primaries, she was ahead in delegates and she had won the two largest states, New York and California, but her rival, Obama, had made a strong showing winning 13 states to Clinton's eight states.
The Democratic tally as of late Wednesdy afternoon showed Clinton with 845 delegates and Obama with 765, in a race in which a candidate needs 2,025 delegates to be able to win the nomination.
But what is a serious problem for Clinton is her lead comes from the super-delegates, members of Congress and other party leaders, who are not selected in primaries and caucuses.
Clinton has 213 super-delegates who have declared for her, and Obama has 127. This means that both candidates are almost level in elected candidates from the primaries: Clinton with 632 and Obama with 638.
These super-delegates are free to change their minds when they get to the convention, and they may chose to do so if Obama is gathering momentum.
The Democrats badly want a clear decision, giving them a leader around whom they can rally. A long and bruising primary campaign would help split the party when its main job should be preparing to challenge the Republicans.
Both Obama and Clinton claimed victory on Wednesday morning. Both know that Obama's ability to appeal to a wide audience is growing, and if he does well in the next few primaries, he may be able to catch Clinton.
The Democratic party bosses are terrified of the race coming down to a vote at the Democratic Convention. They want the convention to be a launch pad to the presidential election for a successful candidate, instead of a destructive fight between their two most hopeful candidates.
On the Republican side, John McCain is clearly the front runner after Super Tuesday. His main rival Mitt Romney failed to make much impression, while the surprise of the night was the strong showing of third-runner Mike Huckabee in winning several southern states.
McCain's main platform has been continuing the war on terror, and the abrupt collapse of the campaign by a major politician like Rudy Giuliani has given McCain unexpected room, as his lack of many other firm policies has not been investigated.
The excitement of Huckabee's strong showing led several commentators to talk about him as a possible running mate for McCain, but that would place McCain's platform firmly in the far right.
If McCain is to break out of his core right wing support, he will have to find a running mate who appeals to the centre, which means Huckabee cannot be considered. Huckabee is a strong social conservative, and he is an ordained Christian evangelical pastor.
His appeal has been mainly in the southern states, and has not been able to move on to a wider national stage. He has attracted some attention for his creationist views, believing that evolution did not happen and that the world was created in a single act about 6,000 years ago.
Where does this leave the Middle East?
The prospect of McCain as president has to be very worrying. He has not mentioned nation building at all when he looks outside the US, so the outlook for Iraq and Afghanistan has to be miserable.
For American worldwide foreign policies to continue to be defined by George W. Bush's sole focus on finding "Muslim terrorists", would continue the reduction of the world's superpower's influence, and continue to wreck the multilateral structure that the world desperately needs to manage its affairs.
Mixed record
Clinton would come to power with a mixed record. She would have her husband at hand to support her, and under his presidency the Middle East got the closest it ever has to a Palestinian peace deal in the Barak-Arafat talks. But she has also shown strongly protectionist tendencies and she led the charge on getting the DP World purchase of P&O rejected in the US.
There is more of a mystery about Obama's positions, since he has offered a lot of rhetoric and little substance. In the past he has made some firm statements in favour of a just peace for the Palestinians, but he has been completely quiet on the issue for many months.
The Arab world has started to hope that if he is elected he will emerge as looking for a fair peace, but a lot of this is hopeful thinking. He has simply not said very much about it.
On Iraq both Clinton and Obama have moved sharply from their more balanced positions earlier in the campaign when they both spoke of a need to 'finish the job', which gave some hope from both for building a new political settlement in Iraq. But during the campaign they have reacted to popular pressure and they both now talk of ending the war in Iraq soon.
This cut and run attitude will mean continued violence in Iraq, unless they change their statements and commit to address the political impasse there.
