Hillary Clinton Is Probably the Best Qualified Presidential Candidate Ever

Jonathan Bernstein – Chicago Tribune

No one knows how Hillary Clinton will do as president, if she gets the chance. But we do know she is probably the best qualified presidential candidate ever …

She has been a senator (for longer than Barack Obama was and longer than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio will have been in 2016). She also has experience on the House side, as a staff member of the Judiciary Committee during Watergate.

As for the executive branch, she was in the cabinet, in the front-line job as secretary of state … Still, it isn’t hard in presidential history to find huge failures stemming at least partly from inexperience, whether it was Bill Clinton’s awful transition or George W. Bush’s deference to people in his administration who manipulated him, or Jimmy Carter’s inability to work with anyone in the federal government.

Hillary Clinton, if she is elected, may not avoid making some of these mistakes, but no one will be able to blame them on a lack of experience.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Clinton is joined by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton, left, on the day he announced his bid for the presidency in Little Rock, Arkansas on Nov. 3, 1991.

Hillary Clinton Needs a Do-over

Jonah Goldberg – The Los Angeles Times

…The Clinton campaign wants a do-over. Her initial rollout was the most disastrous nonfatal presidential campaign debut in modern memory.

Her initial announcement video in April — which most outlets accurately reported as her official announcement — was well done. After that, everything went downhill; a steady stream of news stories and damning allegations about her family foundation and tenure as secretary of State has dogged her almost daily…. In March she enjoyed a 15-percentage-point lead over Jeb Bush, according to a CNN poll. She had roughly similar double-digit leads over Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Scott Walker. Those leads have nearly evaporated….

Worse, the public is souring on her …. A majority of Americans polled by CNN now view her unfavorably (50% to 46%), her worst polling performance in 14 years…. the Clinton campaign has turned its back on a “nationwide electoral strategy,” opting instead to reassemble the Obama coalition of 2008 and 2012. To do that, Clinton needs to run to the left and pick polarizing fights that galvanize low-information and hard-to-motivate voters.

Republicans Might as Well Pound Sand

Eugene Robinson – The Washington Post

The GOP seems to have forgotten the central fact about the Clintons: That which does not kill them makes them stronger.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham as she pounds her fist as she testifies on Capitol Hill about the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. (AP)

Yes, it’s true that a Washington Post-ABC News poll reported last week that Hillary Clinton’s favorability rating has dipped to 45 percent. Yes, people seem to disapprove of the way she handled her personal emails while she was secretary of state, wonder about all the money sloshing around the Clinton Foundation and question how she handled the Benghazi tragedy….

Her fiery speech last week in  defense of voting rights was her campaign’s best moment so far.

Clinton slammed several of the leading Republican candidates — by name — for their roles in GOP-led efforts to restrict the franchise through voter-ID laws and other means. And she called for automatic voter registration of all citizens upon reaching age 18.

Talk about hitting the right buttons…

So far, Clinton has done any number of things right — and, by my count, nothing wrong. Next year’s election is still hers to lose, and she doesn’t seem inclined to do anything of the sort.

Hillary Clinton arrives at a funeral for former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, June 6, 2015 in Wilmington, Del. (AP/Matt Rourke)

The Coming Democratic Panic

Fred Barnes – The Weekly Standard

When a CNN poll last week showed Hillary Clinton leading Rand Paul by a single percentage point (48-47) and only three points ahead of Marco Rubio (49-46) and Scott Walker (49-46), it was mildly shocking….

If the next CNN survey shows Clinton actually behind one or two or three of the GOP candidates, it won’t be just shocking. It will send Democrats into a near-panic over the possibility of losing the White House in 2016, even with their preferred candidate, Clinton, as nominee.

Such a poll result isn’t far-fetched as we watch Clinton’s campaign deteriorate. True, head-to-head matchups this early in the presidential cycle are almost never predictive. But in this case, it’s the psychological impact that matters….

The expectation of Clinton’s glide into the White House in 2016 is gone.