lack of it in the form of campaign funds, wouldn’t stop her tottering into the next round of primaries on a shoe-string.

And even if - perish the thought - an assassin stepped from behind a rhododendron bush and laid Mrs Clinton low, we'd have Bill Clinton insisting that a generic Clinton family candidacy for the Democratic nomination be kept in play, while he simultaneously sought repeal of the 22nd amendment which bars US presidents from serving more than two terms.

Bill's on record saying that while no president should serve three consecutive terms, a two-term president should be able to clamber back into the White House for a third stint after a respite in private life.

Now the primary campaign heads off to Indiana and North Carolina amid a steady downpour of news stories about the mathematical impossibility of Hillary Clinton outstripping Barack Obama in either the delegate count or the popular vote.

But math isn't the issue here. Mrs Clinton is set to stay in the race until the roll-call at

the Democratic convention in Denver on August 27 conclusively settles the issue.

A popular line is that this interminable struggle between Obama and Clinton is good news for the Republican candidate, John McCain. While the Democrats bicker in the playpen, he can issue statesmanlike bulletins on matters of national importance.

The flaw here is McCain's inability to address matters of national importance in any serious way, beyond calling for endless war in Iraq.

McCain gets soft-treatment from the claque on his press bus, but the going could rapidly get rough for him. Just as John Kerry got whacked for false claims about his war record in 2004, McCain is already on the receiving end of charges (most recently on the CounterPunch website and newsletter I coedit) that as a POW 'hero' McCain collaborated with his captors for three years and was on Vietnamese radio so often he was tagged as 'the PW Songbird'.

Meanwhile Cliff Schecter, author of The Real McCain says an AP reporter "recounted to