John Kerry Endorses Barack Obama

John Kerry, the senator who ran against George Bush in 2004, today endorsed Barack Obama in a slap in the face to Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who was his vice-presidential running mate in 2004.

"Martin Luther King Jr. said the time is always right to do what is right," Kerry told a rally in South Carolina. "This is the right time to share with you ... that Barack Obama can be, will be and should be the next president of the United States."

He added: "I believe more than anyone else, Barack Obama can help our country turn the page and get America moving by uniting and ending the division we have faced."

Edwards said in a statement that he respected Kerry's decision.

While Kerry was close to Bill Clinton, he fell out with Hillary last year when she criticised him over a gaffe in which he told students to study hard or they might end up in Iraq. The remark forced him to abandon his bid to seek the Democratic nomination this time round too.

The Democratic race is set to narrow with Bill Richardson, who had hoped to become the first Hispanic president, shelving his campaign after coming fourth in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.

A formal announcement was expected from his campaign headquarters in New Mexico, where he is governor. He is likely to suspend his campaign rather than abandon it, though the end result is essentially the same.

Richardson, 60, took only 2% in the Iowa caucuses last week and less than 5% in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

However he still harbors ambitions of becoming vice-president and hopes he will be the running mate of the eventual Democratic winner, almost certainly Clinton or Obama.

As he put his bid for the nomination on hold, there were increasing signs that the mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, is seriously considering a run even at this late stage as an independent. In spite of repeated denials that he would stand, he is spending millions of dollars on polling in 50 states to gauge his chances of winning the White House.

Bloomberg's entry would complicate the contest, taking votes from both Democratic and Republican candidates and potentially influencing the final outcome.

A former Bloomberg political strategist, Douglas Schoen, told the Associated Press that Bloomberg has hired research companies to create a national database that not only would gauge potential support for a White House run but would be used to target campaign messages if he joined the race. "I am not a candidate for being president of the United States," Bloomberg insisted, leaving open at least the possibility he might be in future.

The Democratic contest has now become basically a two-horse race, between Clinton and Obama. John Edwards' best chance was to win in Iowa but he ended up in third place.

When he entered the race early last year, Richardson presented himself as a representative from the increasingly influential American West and Hispanic population, the fastest-growing ethnic group in the US.

At the start of the race last year, journalists regularly described the contest as offering the chance of the first woman president, the first African-American or the first Hispanic.