Hillary Clinton, who conceded defeat officially to Barack Obama on Saturday and threw her support behind him, begins a week-long break today to recover from their marathon nominating battle and plan her future.

As her campaign aides began a period of soul-searching and postmortems to analyse why she lost to Mr Obama - with some keener to apportion blame than to take it - Mrs Clinton herself pledged to look forward during her 28-minute concession speech.

In the short term, Mrs Clinton, her husband, Bill, and their staff will be in discussions with the Obama camp to determine how they can be most usefully deployed on his behalf as he turns his attention to defeating John McCain.

Mrs Clinton - who gave a vigorous endorsement of Mr Obama and called for party unity - has promised him that she will campaign hard on his behalf.

Yet in putting the interests of the Democratic Party first, Mrs Clinton was also preserving - and safeguarding - her own career options. She suspended her campaign, which allows her to carry on the task of paying off her $30 million (£15 million) campaign debt and to retain control of her convention delegates.

By holding on to them, it increases her leverage to get Mr Obama's help in raising money on her behalf.

If Mr Obama stumbles badly against Mr McCain, Mrs Clinton - by remaining a force at the convention - could conceivably still force her way on to the presidential ticket as his running-mate.

If in the unlikely event Mr Obama suffers such a catastrophic mishap that he appears unelectable, there is even a chance that the party could still turn to her.

If Mr Obama loses to Mr McCain in November, Mrs Clinton would immediately become the Democratic front-runner for the 2012 election. She will still not have ruled out a run in 2016.

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