Giuliani is biding his time, banking on a big victory in Florida to propel him into prime position on Super Tuesday Hillary Clinton and John McCain prove that there are second acts in politics, gaining unlikely victories in what's been hailed as the most exciting primary season in modern US political history, writes Denis Staunton
As New Hampshire voters went to the polls last Tuesday, the biggest challenge facing Barack Obama was to craft a victory speech that would match the power and beauty of the remarks he made in Iowa five days earlier. With his double-digit lead in the polls and the campaign of his chief rival Hillary Clinton in open panic, Obama seemed so invincible that Paddy Power had declared the Democratic race over and started paying out on the Illinois senator as the party's nominee.
At a high school in Nashua where he had thrilled almost 3,000 supporters a couple of days earlier, Obama rose to the occasion on Tuesday night with a stirring message of confidence and hope built around a simple refrain.
"When we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can . . .
"Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can. Together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can."
The only problem was that New Hampshire voters had sent a different three-word message: Not so fast.
Clinton's remarkable victory not only took Obama by surprise, but left the former first lady scrambling to rework a speech that was clearly designed as that of a gracious but unbowed loser.
"Tomorrow, we're going to get up, roll up our sleeves and keep going," she said, apparently forgetting that she had just won the most astonishing victory of her political life.
Mike Tyson said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and Clinton's defeat in Iowa effectively shredded her plan to win the Democratic nomination by behaving like an incumbent and cultivating an aura of inevitability.
For months, her campaign had kept her away from the media and avoided too much interaction with voters in case she made a slip that could threaten her national poll lead. For years, through a seat on the Senate armed services committee she had cultivated a tough image as a foreign policy hawk, seeking to neutralise fears that a woman could not be strong enough to be president.
Now she was winning in New Hampshire by appealing to women with an emotional display, showing her softer side at each opportunity and talking to every journalist who put a microphone in front of her.
IF THE ROLE of gender in the presidential contest moved into the foreground this week, so too did that of race. Some of Obama's supporters detected racial overtones in statements by Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, said she was offended by the former president's dismissive suggestion that Obama's political record was a fairy tale and that the Illinois senator was just a kid.
"For him to go after Obama using 'fairy tale', calling him a 'kid', as he did last week, it's an insult. And I tell you, as an African-American, I find his words and his tone to be very depressing."
Some political analysts have attributed the pollsters' failure to predict Clinton's win to hidden racism on the part of white voters who pretended they would vote for Obama but chose a white candidate instead.
These controversies are uncomfortable for a candidate who has sought to transcend race, speaking to black audiences as an African-American but presenting a reassuring, conciliatory face to white voters. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said recently that, although he is supporting Obama, he has not been asked to campaign for him.
"I respect the distance he is trying to create for his own strategic purposes, and I accept that," Jackson said.
This week, veteran black journalist Glen Ford said that Obama's victory in Iowa, and his close second place finish in New Hampshire, had shown clearly that a black candidate could be embraced by white voters.
"The problem is, he has done that at the expense of black people, by constantly, relentlessly sending out signals to white people that a vote for Barack Obama, an Obama presidency, would signal the beginning of the end of black-specific agitation, that it would take race discourse off of the table. And he's gone to extraordinary lengths to accomplish that," Ford told Amy Goodman on the political broadcast Democracy Now.
"He will amass larger and larger percentages of black votes now that black folks see that white folks will vote for Barack Obama. Finally, there's somebody who has a chance. But he can only do this - he has only pulled this off - by these continual assurances to white people that race will be off the table. At least, that is the way it is received."
The black vote will come into focus on January 26th when the Democratic contest moves to South Carolina, where up to half of primary voters could be African-American. Obama has opened up a substantial lead over Clinton in the state, and at the height of this week's panic in Camp Clinton she considered skipping the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucus next Saturday.
Clinton has now decided to fight both contests but, because she almost gave up on them, she can afford to lose both. Obama, on the other hand, has received the endorsement of Nevada's powerful culinary union, and, although he is trailing in the polls, is widely expected to win the caucus.
In fact, Obama victories in both states have already been discounted by most commentators, leaving Clinton in the happy position in which an unexpectedly good showing in either state would give her a boost going into Super Tuesday on February 5th, when more than 20 states vote.
NEW HAMPSHIRE PRODUCED not one but two comebacks as John McCain roared back from the near collapse of his campaign last summer to defeat millionaire former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the Republican primary. McCain, who is 71 and would be the oldest person ever to be sworn in as president, was so exhausted on Tuesday night that he seemed scarcely able to read his victory speech.
"I'm past the age that I can claim the noun 'kid', no matter what adjective precedes it. But tonight we sure showed them what a comeback looks like," he said.
The former fighter pilot was up at 5am the following day, however, for a round of television interviews followed by campaign appearances in Michigan and South Carolina.
Next Tuesday's primary in Michigan will determine whether Romney, the candidate of the Republican establishment, and who has outspent all his rivals put together, can stay in the race. With a campaign strategy he called "kindling", Romney hoped to win in Iowa and New Hampshire and build momentum to take all before him on Super Tuesday.
Instead, he lost to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in Iowa and to McCain in New Hampshire and although Romney won Wyoming, that was only because nobody else was contesting it seriously.
This week, Romney pulled all his advertising in South Carolina and Florida to focus his resources on a make-or-break fight in Michigan.
A former venture capitalist who specialised in turning around failing businesses, Romney originally planned to run for the presidency on the basis of his strength as a manager who rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and who worked with Democrats as Massachusetts governor.
He changed tack when McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani emerged as the strongest candidates in the race early last year. Romney, who had favoured abortion rights for most of his political career and once claimed to be more pro-gay than Teddy Kennedy, now became the candidate of family values.
Romney's effort to appeal to Christian conservatives failed not only because of his recent conversion to their cause but also because he is a Mormon, a faith many evangelicals believe is not Christian.
Then along came Huckabee, the wisecracking former Baptist minister who advertised himself as a Christian leader and swept up the evangelical vote in Iowa. Romney's attack ads had little impact on Huckabee in Iowa, nor on McCain in New Hampshire, and he now faces both men in his home state of Michigan.
A former chairman of General Motors, Romney's father was a popular governor of Michigan, and it's safe to say that, if he can't win here, Romney can't win anywhere. McCain won the state in 2000, but Huckabee hopes to pull off a surprise victory by appealing not only to Christian conservatives but to working class "Reagan Democrats" who have been hit hard by the recession in the motor industry.
Huckabee's economic populism and his moderation in foreign policy - calling for the closure of Guantanamo and condemning the Bush administration's "bunker mentality" - has horrified the Republican establishment, which is determined to stop him winning the nomination. If Romney falters, it must choose between McCain and Giuliani as the best standard-bearer for fiscal conservatism and a muscular foreign policy.
McCain is hoping to sew up the nomination by winning in Michigan and South Carolina, creating an unstoppable momentum going into Super Tuesday.
South Carolina was McCain's undoing in 2000, when George W Bush won following a nasty campaign that included anonymous calls to voters suggesting that McCain had fathered a black child. In fact, the McCains had adopted a child from Bangladesh.
Although most political analysts attribute McCain's defeat to the Bush smears, McCain himself is convinced that he was doomed from the start because Bush had already recruited most of the key figures in the local Republican Party. This time around, McCain has made sure to square the party in advance, winning the backing of more than half the Republican state representatives.
Meanwhile, Giuliani is biding his time, banking on a big victory in Florida to propel him into prime position on Super Tuesday, when he hopes to win big, delegate-rich states such as California and New York. Giuliani's difficulty is that, after placing fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire, he faces a similar prospect in Michigan and South Carolina, leaving other candidates - notably McCain - to soak up the limelight.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE boycotting Michigan and Florida because both states defied the party leadership by moving their primaries up to January. For candidates in both parties, the focus is already on February 5th, when about half the delegates needed for each party's nomination are awarded.
On the Democratic side, both Obama and Clinton have enough money to run a national campaign on Super Tuesday, buying TV air time in states such as California, by far the biggest prize in terms of delegates. About half of the contests are open primaries, where Republicans and independents are allowed to vote in the Democratic contest.
These open primaries should favour Obama, whose appeal to unity across partisan lines is attractive to independent voters, but Clinton could have an advantage in the closed primaries, where only Democrats can take part.
John Edwards says he is staying in the race right up to the Democratic convention in August. Because delegates are awarded proportionately in each primary, he could command a significant voting block at the convention.
The contest between Clinton and Obama is so close that Democrats are facing the possibility that, for the first time in 40 years, the primaries will not produce a clear winner, leaving the national convention to determine the candidate. More than 700 "super-delegates" - members of Congress and senior party officials who are not pledged to any candidate - could then play a crucial role.
The outcome of the Republican race is equally uncertain. Unless the party unites around a candidate before Super Tuesday, delegates could be split three, four or even five ways at the national convention in September.
Republicans have long assumed that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee and many welcomed that prospect, convinced that the former first lady would represent the best "get out the vote" mechanism their party could wish for. Obama, however, inspires little hostility among Republicans and independent voters and his nomination by the Democrats would demand a new strategy from the Republicans.
Most of the Republican candidates suggested last week that they would challenge Obama's experience and question whether there was any substance behind his rhetoric - just as Clinton has. Although some of the party's strategists are daunted by the prospect of running against such a likable and charismatic figure, others believe that Obama could be "an easier kill" than the more battle-hardened Clinton.
For her part, Clinton will spend the next few weeks hammering at Obama's credibility, pointing out inconsistencies in his record and driving home the message that he is nothing more than a conventional politician who talks a good game.
In this, Clinton may be helped by the embarrassment felt by much of the US media over its premature coronation of Obama this week and the unconcealed glee of many commentators who trumpeted the fall of the House of Clinton.
Since New Hampshire, a cooler tone has emerged in coverage of Obama, and as Clinton makes herself available to journalists she has long kept at arms length, she can expect gentler treatment than before. Whether this will be enough to carry her to the nomination will depend, however, not on the media but the voters - who showed this week that they remain the masters of this process and will not be told what to do.