The initial excitement surrounding the possibility that the US would become liberated from its history of inequality, genocide and oppression and elect a black president has all but died.
Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan and a white American, now seems certain to be trumped by Hillary Clinton to contest the presidency for the Democratic Party. He therefore will not move from first base-to use American baseball terminology-in his quest for presidential office.
For every quarter of 2007, Mrs Clinton has pulled significantly away from Mr Obama and now has a 53 per cent approval rating to contest the presidency on a Democratic ticket. Mr Obama is languishing at 20 per cent.
Even in raising funds to lubricate the right wheels and to mount aggressive and expensive media campaigns, the former First Lady has now surpassed Mr Obama, who had previously pulled far ahead in this crucial aspect of fighting elections in the US.
Interestingly, and according to the opinion polls, Mrs Clinton has so far received an even larger percentage of the black support than Senator Obama, as black Americans continue their love affair with former US President Bill Clinton who is starring in his wife's race to secure the White House for the Clinton family.
Perhaps Americans, long without a royal family like their cousins across the Atlantic, are falling in love with the notion of a family dynasty: the Kennedy family which was not actually consummated, then President Bush I, Bush II; dear Bill with his saxophone to be withdrawn to play jazz for the black community; now his wife who stuck with him notwithstanding his fondness for Monica Lewinski and reportedly other women.
There are those who believe that Mrs Clinton's surging past Mr Obama was bound to happen once the novelty of having this brush with electing a black man had lost its gloss and the reality of America's historical foundations in iniquitous race relations, which survive into the present, returned to the consciousness of the majority ethnic group.
And this, say the cynics of America's readiness for a black man and his wife in the White House, is notwithstanding the fact that Senator Obama, with his sharp, clean-cut good looks, his distinguished student career at the prestigious Harvard University, the interest expressed in him through the sale of his books, had become the most eligible black American in the history of blacks making efforts at being elected president.
And while there remains the case of front runner Howard Dean fading into the background to Kerry Edwards, it seems quite unlikely that Mr Obama would make such a surge for the wire. Indeed, in favour of Hillary Clinton continuing on to the Democratic candidacy is the fact that all the leading candidates of both parties in the year before the election have gone on to receive the nomination of their parties to contest the presidency.
But Senator Obama's engagement of the presidential race must certainly raise the aspirations of blacks and perhaps other minority groups in the US and perhaps in the not-too-distant future one of their number would take the Obama charge one step further.
As to how it seems for Hillary Clinton on her way to being the candidate of the Democrats, the Republicans have been terribly weakened and affected by the legacy that President Bush is leaving behind.
But if Mrs Clinton wins the nomination and eventually the presidency, America would have at least crossed the hurdle of having a member of another minority group, females, placed in power.