While I support Bernie Sanders, my view is that Hillary Clinton will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee for President.
Right now her biggest liability is her favorability, which has been rising ever so slightly in the last couple weeks, but is still well below where it needs to be if she wants to win the presidency.
To get her favorability numbers back up, Clinton needs to reassure the public that she is indeed trustworthy, and those numbers are not good. She has already convinced them that she's competent and polished enough to be President, her performances at the debate and the Benghazi hearings have proved that beyond any doubt.
But the reality is that Americans don't vote for who they think is most competent and polished. They vote for who they like. I've repeated this ad nauseum in numerous comments I've made and I'll do so again - the presidential candidate with higher favorability numbers always wins the election. If my word doesn't do it for you, try Nate Silver. Here's a chart from Silver of presidential election winners since Reagan:
As you can see, the candidate with the higher favorability always wins - and no one with unfavorable numbers higher than their favorables ever wins. Right now Clinton's favorability numbers are low and underwater.
If the CBS/NY Times poll still isn't enough for you to go on, try Gallup. If you look at the link, which shows favorability numbers of presidential election candidates in Gallup's last pre-election polls, here's what you'll find:
1992: George H.W. Bush's final favorability number was 46%. Bill Clinton's was 51%. Winner: Bill Clinton
1996: Bob Dole's final favorability number was 51%. Bill Clinton's was 56%. Winner: Bill Clinton
2000: Al Gore's final favorability number was 55%. George W. Bush's was 58%. Though Gore won the popular vote, things were close enough that Bush won the electoral vote. Winner: George W. Bush (*I should add that 2000 offers some hope that Clinton can win next year even if she has lower favorability than her opponent considering that Gore would've won but for the Supreme Court despite having lower favorability than Bush; having said that, I don't think we should be hanging all our hopes on a repeat of 2000 as we saw how that turned out)
2004: John Kerry's final favorability number was 51%. George W. Bush's was 53%. Winner: George W. Bush
That Gallup link doesn't include the final favorability numbers for the 2008 or 2012 races, but this one does. And here's what it found:
2008: John McCain's final favorability number was 50%. Barack Obama's was 62%. Winner: Barack Obama
2012: Mitt Romney's final favorability number was 46%. Barack Obama's was 55%. Winner: Barack Obama
Now, it's not impossible for Clinton to get her numbers up as the election is a year away. But she has little margin for error since her current favorables are so low.
This is why Clinton's disingenuous explanation of DOMA concerns me greatly about how Clinton will handle the general election and if she becomes president. Her low favorability is due in no small measure to the sense that she is not trustworthy.
To be clear I don't think this DOMA stuff per se is going to hurt her either in the primary or the general. Clinton's explanation of DOMA won't bother Republicans since they favor DOMA. The only people Clinton's DOMA explanation would bother are Democrats and ultimately they will line up behind Clinton to prevent a Republican from taking the White House.
But it is part of a pattern of behavior we've seen from Clinton that feeds into the narrative of her being disingenuous.
From her claims that her vote for the Iraq War was not really a vote for the Iraq War, to the Bosnian sniper incident, to her facetious claim about not knowing what wiping a hard drive meant, and now to claiming that in fact DOMA was really an effort to prevent a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, it's clear this is Clinton's m.o.
What her disingenuous, self-serving rationalization for DOMA tells me is that this tendency to offer disingenuous, self-serving rationalizations is almost pathological, something she can't seem to quit doing. And to shake this perception of her as untrustworthy, which is a big reason for her low favorability numbers, she needs to stop doing stuff like this.
Again, this DOMA thing likely won't stop Clinton's march to the nomination. But if she pulls this kind of crap in a general election, it will hurt her. She simply cannot afford to have her favorability numbers remain where they are or even sink lower if she wants to win the presidency. We as Democrats, and as Americans, cannot afford that.
I know Clinton supporters will argue that the favorability numbers of the Republican candidates are lower than hers. But that may not remain true through next November, especially so for candidates who are not particularly well-known but could conceivably become well-liked, like Marco Rubio for example. If anyone knows this it's Clinton - her husband Bill when he was not particularly well-known by the public had low favorability numbers in early 1992. But after the Democratic convention in July that year Clinton's numbers skyrocketed.
If the nominee is someone who I can see the public possibly liking, like Rubio, sees a similar trajectory in his numbers, and if Clinton's do not rise considerably, she is in deep trouble. And so are we.
For further discussion, see below.
I also know some Clinton supporters will argue that her numbers could also take a Bill Clinton 1992-like trajectory. Maybe so, but it's highly unlikely and here's why: Hillary Clinton is very well-known, having been in the public eye for 23 years.
A political figure who is very well-known usually does not see much variation in his or her favorability numbers. The reason is that the public usually has hardened, well-formed views of that figure. As an example of what I'm talking about, look no further than Hillary Clinton herself. During the 2007-2008 election season, Clinton's favorability never varied outside the 45-54% range (numbers obtained from this Gallup favorability chart that I also linked to earlier).
For anyone who thinks a great convention next year will automatically send the numbers for even a well-known political figure like Clinton skyrocketing, look at Barack Obama in 2012 (and here I'm again using figures from this Gallup favorability chart). On August 22-25 his favorability was at 53%. On September 24-27, which was a few weeks after what was widely acknowledged to be a fantastic Democratic convention, Obama's favorability was barely higher at 55%. For yet another example, look at Bill Clinton in 1996. On August 16-18 Clinton's favorability was 57%. On September 2-4, after the Democratic convention, Clinton's favorability had improved just 5 points to 62%.
The only time the numbers for such well-known political figures rise dramatically is when they leave the political arena and become nonpartisan figures. That's why ex-presidents see their numbers see their numbers rise sharply after leaving office, even George W. Bush. It's why Hillary Clinton's numbers only skyrocketed after she became a nonpartisan figure as Secretary of State. But once she re-entered the political arena, her numbers came back down to their previous level, and in fact have sunk further as the year progressed.
(One thing worth mentioning: while well-known political figures usually don't see much upward variation in their favorability numbers, they can see big drops in their numbers. As an example of that see George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, and to a lesser extent Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal)
Now if Clinton is very lucky, the nominee will be Donald Trump. The reason is that he is already so well-known having been in the public eye for four decades, and his numbers right now are downright horrible. Because everyone knows him quite well, it's highly doubtful that public opinion of him will change much for the better.
Nor do I foresee Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Chris Christie, or Carly Fiorina skyrocketing in favorability any time soon - they just don't come across as the types the public can suddenly take a great liking to.
Ben Carson currently has relatively high favorables but he says so much crazy shit that with enough exposure, his favorables will almost certainly come crashing down. In fact his unfavorable numbers are already making a steady climb in light of his various crazy statements over the last few weeks.
The candidate I do fear may be a problem is Marco Rubio. He's young, telegenic, speaks well, he's got a nice-sounding personal life story, he has excellent message discipline, his stump speech seems designed to offend as few people as possible, and as we saw a couple nights ago he can be quite slippery in a debate. For more about what I'm talking about, see this piece from Greg Sargent yesterday. His favorable/unfavorable numbers are underwater right now, but he's not terribly well-known. As I mentioned previously, I worry that with a proper reintroduction to the public along the lines of what Bill Clinton did in 1992, Rubio's numbers could jump significantly.
Fortunately Republicans look hell-bent on nominating Trump or Carson. If that happens, then bully for us. But if it's Rubio, it could be a challenge for us. A relentlessly brutal negative campaign along the lines of what Bush I did to Dukakis in 1988 and Obama did to Romney in 2012 would likely be needed to cut him down to size. Also, Rubio's weakness in my opinion is that he's lacking in the intellect department. I think Clinton would expose his lack of substance in a debate. But Americans don't necessarily elect people based on intelligence or even on debate performance. They elected Reagan twice after all and they elected Bush over Kerry despite Kerry besting Bush in all three debate performances.
This is all why I think it is incredibly important and of the greatest possible urgency that Hillary Clinton, who is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee, do everything within her power to get her favorability numbers up, starting yesterday. Our election hopes cannot rest on simply praying and wishing that the Republicans nominate someone who has even lower favorability than Clinton. Since Clinton is already well-known, it will be that much harder to get her favorability numbers up.
So in my view there is not a moment to lose and little room for error. And it should go without saying that Clinton simply cannot afford to keep doing stuff along the lines of her rationalizations of DOMA and the Iraq War and the various other things I mentioned earlier.