McCain up, Edwards out, Giuliani never in

John McCain's Florida victory makes the Republican race a two-horse race, and I can't see how Mitt Romney is going to become a more attractive candidate by going more negative. There is plenty to worry the Democrats here - the Republicans look like they might now effectively settle on their nominee first, and they look like they will choose their most electable candidate.

McCain was keen to stress that this was a Republican only primary in his victory speech. Romney won the pro-Bush Republican vote; McCain won Republican voters who are critical of the President.

The excellent Jay Cost makes a very interesting point about this: that this at odds with McCain's championing of the surge in Iraq and Romney's running as a pro-change outsider, but that it chimes with who voters believe the candidates really are.

I think one reason has to do with the long memories of voters. McCain's reputation as an anti-Bush maverick is still quite ingrained in their minds .... There is a lesson in all of this about the limitations of political campaigns. They only do so much to shape the thinking of the American voter. Those who have held opinions about political figures for a long time are not going to be easily disabused of them, despite how many political ads are run or adjustments in messaging are made. I think this hints at a mistake the Romney campaign made - it pivoted too late to a message about fixing Washington.

There is a message in there for Hillary Clinton too.

I don't agree with all of John Edwards' positions - but it was great to see a credible Presidential candidate putting poverty in the US absolutely front and centre of a major campaign.

What happens to John Edwards' supporters is going to be a crucial factor in the Obama-Clinton race, and it is very difficult to call. The candidate was siding with Obama - as 'change' versus the 'status quo' - but the demographics of the Edwards vote could favour Hillary Clinton.

Rudy Giuliani's failed bid will be taught in campaign school as an example of how to get everything wrong. Clearly, it was a mega-flop, and the strategy was too clever by half.

But I am not sure all of the criticism of a miscalculated campaign strategy is fully merited. To argue that Giuliani's later states strategy was the problem depends upon the counter-factual argument that he could have been much better placed had he fought seriously in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan. How well could he have done at best? Would he have gone into Florida with a better shot if he'd somehow squeaked a third place somewhere?

Still, the 2008 race offered the best possible opportunity for this unorthodox approach. And even this race could not stay open enough. It will not be a strategy that anybody will try again.

Even if Giuliani ran the wrong campaign, perhaps the real lesson is a more fundamental one. If you are a pro-life New Yorker, don't make a serious bid for the Republican nomination.

The state of the Presidency

He seems to have become an unperson, never mentioned by the Republican candidates as they campaign in Florida, but President George Bush reminded us that he will still be here for 51 more weeks as political attention switched briefly from the campaign trail to the President's final State of the Union address.

But only briefly. Now that he is a President with little chance of pursuing anything beyond a blocking agenda domestically, Bush is left only with words, not action. And even the rhetoric fell flat as Andrew Stephen notes as he bids goodnight to the President in an online New Statesman commentary.

Even Bush’s best speech writers have now deserted him, and that showed in the 59 minutes he was at the rostrum. The grand, sweeping assertions of how a Bush-led America would transform the world, bringing it democracy and everything else that was both good and American, had gone - replaced by far more feeble, forgettable lines like “we are spreading the hope of freedom”.

The Kennedy factor

Does it take a dynasty to beat a dynasty?

That may be the theory behind not one, not two but three Kennedys backing Obama.

Jonathan Cohn makes the case that this could have a significant impact.

Ted Kennedy's enthusiasm for Obama highlights one of the most unusual and interesting features of his candidacy - Obama's ability to combine what appears to be an almost impeccably liberal record with a strong emphasis on reaching out and bipartisan unity.

There is a potential 'Blair factor' here: if everybody can project their own image of what they believes the candidate stands for, it is very difficult to avoid disappoinment. Yet could it also prove a powerful strategy to unlock change in a polarised system?

On that theme. Ezra Klein has an excellent op-ed against unity, and for division in yesterday's LA Times.

Beyond race?

Barack Obama's crushing victory in South Carolina should certainly close down the offensive claim that he "is not black enough" to appeal to African-American voters.

But that may not be an umnambiguous boon to Obama: his overwhelming lead among black voters while running third among whites does raise questions about a candidacy which promises to transcend race.

Perhaps Bill Clinton's much criticised attacks on Obama may have had the intended strategic effect, even if they cost Hillary votes in this primary. I felt Obama held his own in the most personalised candidates' debate yet - particularly by arguing that he was notsure which Clinton he was running against - but Obama's own campaign strategists may with hindsight they made more of Hillary Clinton's ill judged remarks about Martin Luther King than was wise.

Jay Cost offers his latest excellent analysis at RealClearPolitics. One interesting hypothesis is that Obama is polling more strongly among white voters in generally white areas, but less well among white voters in racially mixed areas.

However, there should be caution against jumping to conclusions. This has been a consistently fluid contest: the different state results haven't simply been about the different demographic groups. There havebeen several examples of similar demographic groups breaking differently in particular states. For example, the lack of a gender gap in Iowa and a strong gender difference between Clinton and Obama in New Hampshire; or Obama having a broader appeal to low income voters in Iowa and a more affluent liberal-left support in losing New Hampshire.

And while John Edwards now looks very much like the third candidate in a two-horse race, his relatively strong appeal having been born in South Carolina, and represented the state next door, offers another complicating factor in trying to extrapolate from the South Carolina result.

Goodbye Fred .. but might McCain put Thompson on his ticket?

Fred Thompson's bid to be President is over. His supporters decided his laid back style could be an asset before his campaign began.

There is a case for small government conservatives not 'giving 110%'. If you believe in government doing less, then the Ronald Reagan style of governing fits the philosophy rather better than the workaholicism of a Margaret Thatcher.

But, when it comes to seeking election, there is laid back, and then there is not turning up.

Still, Thompson's lacklustre campaign might just prove to have played a decisive role in the Republican nomination, should John McCain now kick on to win. Thompson may well have drawn enough conservative votes in coming third to cost Mike Huckabee victory in South Carolina, having attacked Huckabee strongly during the primary campaign. And it could be argued that Rudy Giuliani's campaign strategy would look much more viable had Huckabee beaten McCain last weekend.

Thompson did sterling service for McCain last week - and could provide an obvious way to reassure nervous conservative Republicans about a McCain-led ticket. So might we see Thompson back in the 2008 race as a Vice-Presidential hopeful?

On the other hand, McCain might be looking for a V-P candidate willing to get out and stump for some votes.

Gordon Brown gets the message - and is planning for the world after Bush

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is thinking about how to shape 'the world after Bush', reports The Independent's political editor Andy Grice.

Great idea, Gordon! And its always good to see Fabian ideas getting a hearing in Downing Street.

Grice links the behind the scenes thinking about life after Bush in Downing Street with the world after Bush debate kickstarted by the Fabian Society.

Although aides insist the Prime Minister has a good working relationship with George Bush, the outgoing President is seen as an obstacle to reform.

Since think-tanks need to start thinking ahead, the post-Bush debate we began back in Summer 2006, in the late Blair era, when our Gordon and Hillary cover image offered a wide range of hostages to fortune, with several publications and events ahead of Saturday's Change the World conference.

As Grice says:

it's tricky territory and there's only so much Brown can do above the radar - for now, at least.

But we need to keep the public debate going too.

As I wrote in Tribune this week

If there can only be new thinking on foreign policy behind the scenes or of it can only be discussed in code, this limits the chances to re-engage and repair the political damage.

On which note, its good to see David Lammy quietly rooting for Obama in his Comment is Free blog post on Saturday's conference.

There is part of a series of Comment is Free blogs with contributors reacting to the event.

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UPDATE: I've chipped in on the Independent Open House blog site with some advice for Gordon Brown on his world after Bush strategy.

Snapshots from the Fabian conference

Some musings from me on Saturday's 'Change the World' conference over at the excellent OurKingdom blog from OpenDemocracy.

My friend and former colleague Mark Leonard - director of the new European Council on Foreign Relations - made an important point at the event, that there is a danger that an obsession with America “infantilises” Europe:

“We must not let a running commentary on American foreign policy become a substitute for having our own foreign policy”.

The world after Bush debate we need should focus on what we can do - as progressives in Britain and Europe. That is also the best way we can engage with and help America's progressive voices in their own debates.