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In her speech Mrs Clinton appeared to be shifting the goalposts again. After her aides appeared ready to accept a compromise solution to the vexed results in Michigan and Florida, the former First Lady called for all their delegates to be counted. She said that Mr Obama no longer needed 2,025 delegates to win - but 2,209.

Michigan and Florida were stripped of their delegates because they broke party rules by moving their contests up the primary calendar. Neither candidate campaigned in Florida and Mr Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.Hours before the West Virginia result, the two candidates spoke together for five minutes on the floor of the US Senate, after returning to Washington to cast votes. It was an outwardly friendly encounter.

According to exit polls in West Virginia, Mr Obama has work to do to win over white blue collar voters. Mrs Clinton's wins in recent contests in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana came with overwhelming support from white blue collar voters, white women and whites over 45.

In West Virginia, which voted for her husband twice but has backed President Bush since, only 44 per cent of Democratic voters said they would be satisfied if Mr Obama is the nominee. Half believed that the Illinois senator shared the incendiary views of his former pastor "a lot" or "somewhat".

Yet many Democratic strategists hope that once Mr Obama is officially crowned as the nominee, passions may cool among the former First Lady's supporters when the general election contest against Mr McCain begins in earnest. James Carville, Bill Clinton's former strategist, said: “I’m for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee. As soon as I determine when that is, I’ll send him a [campaign] cheque.”

Hours before the West Virginia result, the two candidates spoke together for five minutes on the floor of the US Senate, after returning to Washington to cast votes. It was an outwardly friendly encounter.

David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s chief strategist, said that nothing would change after the result. He highlighted polls suggesting that his candidate was well placed to beat John McCain in the general election.

Mr Obama had used a visit of only four hours to West Virginia on Monday to take the unusual step of conceding that Mrs Clinton would win the state. Before he left he visited a pool hall, where he displayed some ability at this man-of-the-people sport — in contrast to the lamentable performance at a bowling alley in Pennsylvania last month that had reinforced impressions he was a liberal elitist.

Asked by a reporter if voters in white and culturally conservative West Virginia regarded him as “un-American”, Mr Obama replied that he hoped they would realise he was a “practising Christian” whose grandfather fought in the Second World War and that “I was raised to love America”.

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