The next candidateThe defeat of John Kerry could bring a silver lining for one Democratic presidential hopeful: Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose chances of reoccupying the White House as chief executive looked better yesterday than ever before.
In four years' time, the Democrats and the Republicans will be presenting new candidates to US voters.
It was widely agreed among Democratic insiders that John Kerry's defeat means Mrs Clinton, the 57-year-old New York senator, is now the leading figure to challenge the Republicans in 2008.
Had Mr Kerry won, he would almost certainly have run again in 2008. By the time Mrs Clinton's next chance came around, in 2012, she would have been 65 and probably perceived as too old.
Party figures would not speculate yesterday about the former first lady's chances and Mrs Clinton's official line has long been that she hoped for a Kerry win.
"That would be great with me," she said soon after the Democratic convention in Boston this year. "I want a Democratic White House for as long as we can have one."
Though held back by his heart surgery, Bill Clinton also went out on the stump for Mr Kerry and at the last minute in Florida at the weekend, even Chelsea Clinton made a series of speeches, breaking years of almost complete public silence.
But the speculation "starts as soon as Bush is declared a winner", the independent pollster Mr Lee Miringoff predicted.
The most extraordinary scenario would pit Mrs Clinton against Mr Jeb Bush, brother of the President, though the Florida governor last month ruled out a run for the presidency.
"I'm not going to run for president in 2008," Mr Bush told ABC television. "That's not my interest. I'm governor of this state. It's the best job in the world."
The identity of a possible Republican candidate in 2008 remains a matter of pure speculation, but two other names have repeatedly featured amid the rumour-mongering: the former New York mayor Mr Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona.
Both are popular figures who have aligned themselves closely with George Bush over recent weeks.
But they are very much maverick Republicans, both socially and economically, and either candidate would mark a radical break with the expected course of a second Bush administration on issues such as abortion and tax cuts.
The California governor, Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger, has made his presidential ambitions clear - but that would require a constitutional amendment to lift the ban on foreign-born Americans holding the office.
One name already being touted as a possible Clinton running-mate is Mr Barack Obama, the charismatic 43-year-old who will become the only serving black senator and only the third in 150 years, after an easy win in Illinois on Tuesday night.
A Clinton presidential run would certainly divide the country.
Though passionately championed by many Democrats, the senator might face unprecedented levels of hostility - and not just from those who object to the very notion of a woman president.
She remains acutely disliked in more conservative parts of the country where the memory of her doomed healthcare initiative and the culture wars of her husband's administration, remain fresh.