Clinton Will Almost Certainly Be Challenged

Matt Bai: “Let’s be clear about this much: no matter what the soothsayers on cable TV tell you, Hillary Clinton is no more likely to clear the Democratic field and avoid a primary in 2016 than Dennis Rodman is to become her secretary of state. Walter Mondale couldn’t pull that off in 1984, and Al Gore couldn’t do it in 2000, and the conditions for Washington-anointed frontrunners have only gotten exponentially harder since then.”

“Somewhere out there is a guy you’ve barely heard of – name of O’Malley or Schweitzer or Hickenlooper – whose idea of fun is spending every night of the month on a different couch in Iowa. At this point in 2002, remember, most people thought Howard Dean was a brand of sausage.”

“The good news for Clinton is that if she decides to run (and I’m inclined to believe she hasn’t yet), she’ll start out with a huge national fundraising apparatus and the loyalty of party regulars. The bad news, of course, is that this is exactly the kind of thing that makes her vulnerable to another grassroots rebellion. In modern presidential politics, every day is Bastille Day.”