In the shadow of the current UK political climate, with civil liberties being increasingly infringed and power being shifted towards those that don't deserve it while they claim they're devolving it to us, it's nice to actually see some kind of positive politics...even if it is over the pond in the US of A. The night is not quite over but the results seem to be that McCain has generally, though not convincingly, won the night for the Republicans, while Huckabee is the most improved candidate with Romney letting his pace drop. For the Democrats it will be described as a draw, and depending on how it's spun it's a close points victory for Obama.

I find that the speeches were very telling. All the speeches on the Republican side were very firmly about how they were taking the race to be the GOP nominee all the way. Romney spoke at a time when he was doing very poorly yet has gone on to win another four states since, Huckabee declared himself the second place runner, and McCain whom constantly does an amazing Droopy impressions understated how powerful his run has become. In the end he took Calafornia to cap off a night of big wins, despite all three candidates winning a fair share of the available states.

The Democrats however had a different tact, both Clinton and Obama obviously knew this was far from the end, Clinton's campaign manager saying that it will at least go until March when Texas is in the frame, and as such their speeches were more aspirational, more about talking to the country...about campaigning even in their congratulatory speech. What is most telling though is what Clinton did next, starting to talk about specific individuals and their needs, constantly looking at her podium as she did so. This was a much more powerful speech from her, yet it was straight from the Obama play book and her lack of ability to address anything but her notes as she spoke the words either showed how uncomfortable she was with this style or how poorly versed she is in using that type of language.

By contrast Obama was his usual best, unfortunately repeating some of his previous statements from other primaries, ever the preachers summoning overtones of Martin Luther King. His story apparently had MSNBC presenters in tears, as well as clearly some of his supporters in the background. The man's ability to move people, to inspire them, was tonight joined by a passion to go on the offensive and stake his claim for the job, to almost offer a challenge to Clinton to try to bring it on again...it is no surprise that this translates in to a phenomenal rise in his popularity over the last month.

This is reflected in the results, it currently looks like Obama will have won 14 states compared to Clinton's 8, surprisingly NBC having to reverse their previous projection of Clinton winning the state of Missouri given that Obama has now pretty much guaranteed himself a very marginal victory there, in a state that has successfully predicted the Presidential candidate winner in every election but one this is a massive boost psychologically and on the spin sheets.

But of course the picture is deeply more complicated, as the result is increasingly looking like it will be decided at conference and delegates are what matter in the race to that event. Counting delegates for Democrats is a thankless and complex task, but using some basic assumptions it is clear to see that Clinton has probably taken marginally more delegates away from tonight but has only done so because of big states. Of course that's the way the system works and Clinton has benefited slightly from it in practical terms. In PR terms though we're already seeing reporters loving the sheer scope of Obama's sweep through the western states accross multiple demographics. Assuming that New Mexico goes his way then it will only further solidify that "electability"

What is less easy to gauge is what this means about opinion across the states in reference to the presidential race. Population figures suggest that Obama has won over more people than Clinton in terms of state representation, and indeed his wins tend to be bigger where there are higher percentages of republicans and independents voting. This could ultimately be much more valuable to the Democrats than any more measurable figures regarding their candidates, and something they really need to consider.

But in all honesty it does look like many of them must be. A month ago Obama was as much as ten points behind Clinton on average, and in some states was a full 20% in deficit. Today we saw Obama shred such poll figures down by half or more, easily making his the more succesful showing. People will look at the results and analyse them and suggest that it was close, but that misses the point that we have a candidate here that has overcome huge hurdles in public opinion in a minuscule period of time, while raising more money from individual donations than any other candidate.

The longer this race goes on, the more likely it is this charismatic president to be will fulfil his dream, and apparently the dreams of the nation.