Eleanor Roosevelt wept:
According to a survey released Tuesday by Suffolk University, 41% of likely Democrat primary voters said if the Granite State presidential primary was held today, they’d vote for Hillary Clinton, with 31% saying they’d back Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Until now, [Mrs.] Clinton has been the overwhelming front-runner for the Democrat nomination in just about all national and early primary and caucus State polling. But the Suffolk survey, conducted June 11th-15th, indicates Sanders could give the former secretary of state a real fight in the first-in-the-nation primary State. The [communist] senator who describes himself as a democratic socialist is energizing many on the left, including supporters of liberal hero Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who’s passing on a White House run.
“The poll is not a home run for Bernie Sanders, but it could be characterized as a line shot to deep left field,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told NH1 News…
“There is a clear gender gap among Democrats in New Hampshire. Among women [Mrs.] Clinton led Sanders 47-28%, but among men she trailed 35-32%,” Paleologos said. “Political philosophy divided the candidates. Among moderate Democrats, [Mrs.] Clinton led Sanders 46-26%, but among self-identified liberals, the race is tied 39-39%.”
Well. If you're the Empress, what do you do about this? Especially since another poll just two days ago showed Sanders pulling within 44% to 32%, so it isn't an outlier, but a definite trend? And it's still seven months until the denizens of the land of Lady Michelle cast their primary ballots. Is the Queen of Mean such a paper tiger that she can really be submarined by an old, white, red fart like Weekend Bernie?
No, probably not. But it most definitely underscores the indelible fundamental weakness of her candidacy, the pointlessness of its re-launch last weekend, and that the only reason she's considered the Donk "front-runner" is because of her party's weak bench and the fact that Fauxcahontas continues to eschew a run that would pass up Mrs. Clinton and leave her in Senator Warren's "pink" dust. It underscores the reality of the Nutroots' nightmare scenario: All they've got is their own version of Jeb Bush without the array of superior and more ideologically palatable challengers, doomed to a crushing general election defeat, and they are stuck with her.
So how does Hill spin these polls? If she campaigns even harder in the Granite State and continues to lose ground, that just magnifies the reality she wants to obscure. If she ignores it, touting big margins in Iowa (54%-12% over Sanders) and South Carolina (56%-15% over an undeclared Joe Biden, which is its own indicator of Mrs. Clinton's weakness) maybe the story fades, but maybe Sanders winds up upsetting her next January, which would be an even more unmitigated disaster, even though neither Sanders nor Martin O'Malley nor Lincoln Chafee would have the resources (since they don't have the gender or ethnic persuasion) to battle her all the way to Philadelphia.
I picture a scenario similar to the one President Bush41 faced in 1992. Pappy was the incumbent, and incumbents typically aren't challenged for re-nomination. But he was by the paleocon pundit Pat Buchanan, whom everybody saw and recognized as the longest of long-shots. And PJB didn't knock off the 41st POTUS....but he did carry 37% of the vote in the New Hampshire GOP primary, and continued his insurgent challenge all the way to the '92 GOP convention in Houston, winning no primaries or caucuses but running up large pluralities every step of the way. That revealed the president's underlying weakness and vulnerability to a capable and dynamic Democrat challenger, which that party's nominating electorate shrewdly and prudently provided. And in November of that year, the rest was dismal history.
Unless Elizabeth Warren gets into this race, de facto incumbent Hillary Clinton will limp, bumble, mumble, dissemble, and arrogate her way to the 2016 Democrat nomination. But unless the GOP drives the final stake through its own heart by nominating her partisan counterpart, Jeb Bush, she will buried next November.
"Ready for Hillary!" is, in short, in a terminal condition, of which Bernie Sanders' running her down in New Hampshire is just the taking of its rectal temperature.
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