My bold prediction that Hillary Clinton would be gone by the weekend proved sadly incorrect. She continues to fight on despite the impossible odds she now faces - at least until Kentucky and Oregon next tuesday.

Despite Hillary's overwhelming and entirely predictable win in West Virginia, John Edwards' endorsement of Barack Obama is dominating the current news cycle. And rightly so - although the impact and leverage of an Edwards endorsement has been reduced by holding out for so long, it is still important in a few key ways.

1) It moves the news away from West Virginia and gives Obama a solid news cycle of positive coverage which would otherwise have been spent discussing his failure to win white votes in West Virginia.

2) Edwards has somewhere in the region of 20 delegates, in virtue of his 2nd and 3rd placings in the early contests before he dropped out. Those delegates are allowed to vote for whoever they want - most will likely now go to Barack Obama - with some already announcing that they will do so.

3) Edwards will be very helpful to Obama in Kentucky, and with white working class voters in general - among whom he has credibility. Bear in mind that Edwards got 7% of the vote in West Virginia despite having dropped out of the race 4 months ago. Obama is expected to lose in Kentucky by a West Virginia-esque margin, and Edwards campaigning there with him could help him narrow the gap.

Lastly comes the question of what job Edwards could take in an Obama administration. VP ought to be a non-starter - he failed to fulfil the 'attack dog' duty of a VP candidate in 2004 and failed to bring a single southern state (or even his home state) with him. But his endorsement makes him the current favourite to take up the position of Attorney General in an Obama cabinet - which would fit with his legal background, his desire to help the poorest, and allow him to follow in the footsteps of his hero Robert Kennedy.