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The question now, for both the Democrats and the Republicans, is whether the Chinese curse can be overcome.

You know the curse, of course: "May you live in interesting times." And for both the Donkey and the Elephant, the times could not possibly be more interesting than they are today.

This past weekend was a triumph for Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. Yes, Mike Huckabee. Remember him?

The affable Baptist is now the sole solace of the conservative base of the GOP, which is deeply unhappy with the ascendancy of Arizona Senator John McCain, who holds views on immigration, global warming and campaign-finance reform they find suspiciously liberal.

It is mathematically impossible for Mr. Huckabee to win the Republican presidential nomination; there simply aren't enough delegates left to overcome Mr. McCain's lead. But by staying in, Mr. Huckabee gives the grassroots an opportunity to vent. Over the weekend, they howled.

In Saturday's Kansas caucuses, Mr. Huckabee embarrassed Mr. McCain, beating him 60 per cent to 24 per cent. He also squeaked out a win in Louisiana, 43 per cent to 42 per cent (though because, under Louisiana's primary rules, no candidate took 50 per cent of the vote, the delegate selection process will move to a new and utterly baffling phase.) And in Washington, while Mr. McCain won, he did it with only 26 per cent of the vote, compared with Mr. Huckabee's 24 per cent, arch-libertarian Congressman Ron Paul's 21 per cent, and even Mitt Romney's 16 per cent. (He's out of the race, but his name remained on the ballot.) So in Kansas and Washington, three out of four Republican voters picked anyone-but-McCain.

Mr. Huckabee may be staying in the race in hopes of forcing Mr. McCain to offer him the vice-presidency, or because he wants to bolster his influence within the evangelical conservative community, or because he's having so much fun.

"I did not major in math," he told jubilant supporters, Saturday, "but I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them."

Barack Obama does not need a miracle to win the Democratic presidential nomination - just more support from Latinos and working women.

The Illinois senator also had a terrific weekend, winning three states and one territory on Saturday by margins that ranged from large (57 per cent to 36 per cent over New York Senator Hillary Clinton in Louisiana) to huge (68 per cent to 32 per cent in Nebraska; 68 per cent to 31 per cent in Washington) to ludicrous (90 per cent to 8 per cent in the Virgin Islands.) Mr. Obama capped it all off with a solid victory last night in the Maine caucuses. Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton are now virtually tied in both the popular vote and in the number of pledged delegates. He's expected to gain more delegates tomorrow, when Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia make their choices. Local polls show Mr. Obama comfortably ahead. Ms. Clinton's schedule has her travelling to Texas tomorrow, so she is obviously not planning any victory celebrations on the Potomac.

Texas and Ohio are the new firewalls. The Clinton campaign strategy is to concede most of the small states to Mr. Obama, while identifying a few big states with sympathetic demographics. Last Tuesday she successfully defended New Jersey, Massachusetts and California. On March 4, she will fight to win Texas and Ohio, and then Pennsylvania on April 22. Mr. Obama is welcome to the rest.

And indeed, all three states should be comfortable Clinton wins. The base of her support is Latinos and women making less than $50,000 a year. Texas has an enormous Latino population, while Cleveland and Philadelphia are working-class towns.

The danger for the Clinton campaign is that a string of unanswered Obama victories could generate the sort of momentum that starts to erode Ms. Clinton's own base.

As though to test that possibility, Mr. Obama departed from his prepared text when he spoke at a Democratic gathering in Richmond, Va., Saturday night, and talked instead about his childhood, reminding working women that he was their son.

"I was born to a teen mom," he told the crowd. "My dad left me when I was 2. I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. And they didn't have a lot of money. They didn't have a lot of status. They could give me love and education and hope."

If Mr. Obama can exploit a string of February wins to strengthen his support among lower-income women voters, if he can convince Latino voters that as an African American, he is their ally rather than their rival, then he could fatally erode Ms. Clinton's base.

And he does seem to be weathering this campaign of attrition better than his rival. Not only has the Obama campaign been raising more money so far this year, but Ms. Clinton announced yesterday that she was replacing her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, with Maggie Williams, who was chief of staff when Ms. Clinton was first lady.

Ms. Williams was brought on board after the defeat in Iowa, and has been gaining influence within the campaign. There are also reports that Ms. Solis Doyle, who has two young children, was expecting everything to be over by Super Tuesday, and wasn't able to face the prospect of managing a campaign that could now go on till the end of August.

Nonetheless, if Ms. Clinton can hold on, taking the big states while ceding everything else, then the odds of a brokered convention start to get above 50-50. Such a outcome would be a disaster for the Democratic Party.

Right now, interesting times are good times for the Democrats, who are delighted by this thrilling contest between two strong, exciting contenders.

The turnout says it all: More than 19 million people have cast votes for the Democrats in state primaries and caucuses, while less than 13 million have shown up to vote for a Republican.

But that could change if the Democrats are forced to hold a brokered convention. There are two enormous, potentially party-shattering problems: the super delegates and the Florida and Michigan primaries.

Those two states were stripped of their delegates for breaking party rules and holding their primaries in January. Both states went heavily in favour of Ms. Clinton - based probably on name recognition, for none of the candidates competed or advertised in the states. In Michigan, there was no other name on the ballot.

The Clinton camp wants the delegations seated at the convention. The Obama camp wants them excluded, unless the states hold new caucuses or primaries. But a second round of primaries would be prohibitively expensive for the state Democratic parties, while the Clinton camp would oppose caucuses, in which turnout is much lower, because the Obama organization always seems to do a better job of getting out the vote.

Unless the campaign, state and national party leadership can work out a solution, it could end up as a credentials fight at the convention, with supporters of the loser convinced their candidate had been robbed of the nomination by backroom shenanigans. And they'd be right.

The super delegates - governors, senators, representatives and senior party officials - are hardly less of a problem. If a majority of elected delegates end up supporting Mr. Obama, but the unelected super delegates vote heavily in favour of Ms. Clinton, which is how they're currently leaning, she could win the nomination. But the cries of betrayal could ruin the convention and split the party.

Mr. Obama has already made it clear that he believes super delegates should defer to the elected delegates. "My strong belief is that if we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates from the most voters in the country, that it would be problematic for the political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters," he told reporters Friday.

To which Ms. Clinton replied at a news conference. "Super delegates are, by design, supposed to exercise independent judgment."

And that is how the blessings of interesting times for the Democrats could so easily turn into a curse.