Three months before the first primary or caucus vote has been cast, the media has pretty much declared the Democratic nomination contest over. Hillary Clinton is so far ahead in the polls and fundraising that she can't be beat, we are told. Polls show her leading in the early primary states. In Iowa (a must-win state for John Edwards), she has 29%, compared to 23% for Edwards, who slipped from the top spot he held in May. She's also leading in New Hampshire and South Carolina by wide margins, even among African Americans when matched up against Obama. Even male voters, historically most skeptical of Hillary, seem to be coming around.
NPR offers a slight note of hope for Obama, suggesting that polls these days don't measure the opinions of people who have only cell phones (mostly the young) and therefore he has a lot more support than most polls measure.
Maybe. The Economist sums up Hillary's strengths and weaknesses best I've seen. I predict we'll start to see some backlash to this media coronation, and drop-off in Hillary's support before caucus and primary votes are cast. Just to spite the media, contrarians in Iowa and elsewhere may support Obama or Edwards to deprive Hillary of an early sweep.
So unless Hillary or Bill Clinton makes a major mistake -- one of them is caught with pants down (photos, clothing, dna testing, or video documentation included), or new allegations of financial chicanery more substantial than Whitewater and more substantial than making a killing overnight off of pork bellies -- I expect Hillary will be the nominee.
With the suspense almost over on the Democratic side, political addicts like myself will shift focus to the Republicans. For Hillary, winning the presidency may be a far more difficult task than winning the Democratic nomination. Mitt Romney seems to have the fewest negatives of the Republican front-runners. Opposing him on religious grounds -- because he's a Mormon -- may turn out to be religious bigotry. If any opponent raises the issue, it could backfire and work in his favor. The Mormon church is more diverse than some people realize, as evidenced by this piece by Latter-Day Mormon Chase Clyde, who looks like a long-haired hippie and says he's a liberal Democrat. Romney is one smooth dude. In a "60 Minutes" profile, he looked to me like Ronald Reagan reincarnated, and without Reagan's dysfunctional Hollywood family, or so it appears now, and without Reagan's hard ideological edge in a year that's likely to be most amenable to "progressive" ideas like health care reform. I could imagine Romney beating Hillary if the circumstances are right.
