Morning Line: “In many ways, the 2016 election is all about Hillary Clinton. She leads in all the polls. Republicans have been taking aim at her since she stepped down as secretary of state. The day after the midterm elections, Republicans were saying that her policies were on the ballot, too. Some in the media want to create drama in a Democratic primary, because why not? So there will be lots of coverage of Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb and the mysterious candidate who could ultimately derail Clinton’s nomination (will Elizabeth Warren re-think it, etc.) Problem with that narrative is there’s no Barack Obama this year, and Warren has said definitively she won’t run this year. The only wildcard is if Clinton has a change of heart or has a prohibitive health issue. And then, what do Democrats do?”

“The Republican race, on the other hand, is setting up to be another long, drawn-out primary process. The GOP has a good problem — unlike Democrats, they have a deep bench. But they also have a continued presidential primary problem — the internecine conflict between the conservative and establishment wings. What’s happened predictably in the last two elections is the establishment candidate has won out, but gets pulled to the right (see John McCain on immigration, Mitt Romney on, well, almost everything). That is going to continue to play out.”

“Hillary Clinton has yet to say for certain whether she’ll run for president, or for that matter, who her campaign manager or what her message would be. But this much she has settled on: If a second presidential campaign happens, it will not be run out of Washington, D.C,” Politico reports.

“Her aides are all preparing for a campaign based in New York — and talks about where to set up shop have increasingly focused on Westchester County, according to several people familiar with the discussions.”

“In the coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton will stop delivering paid speeches. She will embark on an unofficial listening tour to gather ideas from the business community, union leaders and others. And she will seek advice from such far-flung advisers as an ad man in Austin, Tex., behind the iconic ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaign and a leading strategist at a Boston-based public affairs consulting firm with ties to the Kennedys,” the New York Times reports.

“The Democratic debacle in Tuesday’s midterm elections has put new urgency on Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to create a blueprint for a 2016 presidential candidacy, including exploring White Plains as a possible national headquarters and digesting exit polls to determine what the midterm results could mean for the presidential electoral map.”

“A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the party’s midterm defeats. Before then, opinions had been mixed about when she should form an exploratory committee, the first step toward declaring a presidential candidacy, with some urging her to delay it until late spring. But over the past few days, a consensus formed among those close to Mrs. Clinton that it is time to accelerate her schedule: She faces pressure to resurrect the Democratic Party, and she is already being scrutinized as the party’s presumptive nominee, so advisers see little reason to delay.”

Joe Klein: “I watched Clinton speak three times during the campaign, and she limited herself to women’s issues too, but she did it cleverly. The emphasis was on economics rather than reproductive rights. She was especially good on the economic impact of pay equity: working women would have more money to spend, and they would spend it on consumer goods, which would create jobs–the opposite of trickle-down economics. She told specific personal stories about her difficulties as a working mom. She spoke slowly, softly, far more confidently than she had in past campaigns.”

“There was a two-tiered rationale for her message: she was spot-on the Democrats’ national pitch, a good soldier selling the blue brand, but the emphasis on women’s rights also redressed a failing from her 2008 campaign. She had run on ‘experience’ then and downplayed the fact that she was a piece of history: the first plausible woman to run for President. She doesn’t have to worry about experience now; everyone knows she has it. The question is, how does she play to her strengths as a woman if she chooses to run? (And I assume she will.) And how does she convince voters that she’s not the same old, same old?”