Gallup has the latest poll data on Hillary:
I know this would please my mother, who was absolutely infuriated (in her quiet, self-effacing way) when Obama took the nomination – Dad said she felt it was women’s turn in the Oval Office, and certainly Hillary had the best shot. She is also doing very well in the general race insofar as the female vote goes:
This seems reflective of her overwhelming national prominence: First Lady of Arkansas; national First Lady in charge of a national health initiative (which fell flat, equal parts poor leadership and Republican antagonism); Senator from New York; very competitive campaign for Democratic Nominee for President; and Secretary of State. I don’t see any other woman, or for that matter any person, matching that list of achievements. We can argue her record is not spotless: the health initiative never really made it to credibility, as I recall, a failure of politics, I suppose – I don’t remember any serious analysis; as a Senator, her reputation was as a quiet, hard working freshman; her failure to win the nomination race involved strategic blunders, generally blamed on her advisors (HillaryLand was their collective name), which still rebounds on her as she should have either picked better advisors or learned to listen outside of them; and a good rep coming out of the Secretary of State position, despite Republican attempts to make Benghazi into some sort of conspiracy.
I’ll go with the general consensus – the nomination is hers if she has a quality, open-minded team behind her. She doesn’t have her husband’s charisma (which, to me, just came off as smarm – I voted for him twice, but never without my skin crawling).
Larison is less certain, seeing the beating in the midterms cannot be a good thing for Democratic hopes of retaining the Presidency:
It is hard to see how any Democratic presidential candidate would benefit from having their party beaten as thoroughly as it was [in November].
