There is not much for me to say except I’ll let Frank Rich in the current edition of New York Magazine to say what I have been saying all along about Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
Clinton can’t go all out in attacks on Sanders because they will alienate the liberal Democratic base, without which she can’t win an election. The real question is whether Sanders can tweak his Clinton critique to build a national campaign beyond his near-certain win next week in New Hampshire. But the biggest issue for Clinton is not Sanders so much as Clinton herself. She performed better in Iowa in 2016 than she did eight years ago, but she remains an uninspiring candidate with a bland message. The enthusiasm among Democrats, especially the younger Democrats who propelled Barack Obama to victory in 2008, is propelling Sanders with a force the Clinton campaign clearly didn’t anticipate and which it has not found a way to counter.
Even more:
Clinton’s weakness was further highlighted on the eve of the Iowa vote by the Times editorial endorsing her over the weekend — an endorsement that provoked anger among the paper’s readers, who responded with an avalanche of comments that probably reflect the overall sentiment of the Democratic grass roots. The editorial was fascinatingly defensive. In making the case for Clinton, the paper praised Clinton’s experience in foreign affairs but never mentioned her biggest foreign-policy failure, her vote to authorize the war in Iraq. And the editorial never mentioned the murky finances of the Clinton family foundation, a continuing source of fascination to investigative reporters at every major news organization in the country, including the Times. Even as the editorial was published, Peter Baker, the paper’s chief White House correspondent, was telling CNN that inquiries by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department into Clinton’s email practices as secretary of State could lead to a summer indictment or a request for a special prosecutor — which, in his words, “basically turns this into a complete disaster for the Democrats in which it is too late to change horses.” Even if Clinton had romped over Bernie Sanders in Iowa, it wouldn’t have countered the uncertainty and anxiety that attend her vulnerable presidential campaign in an election cycle when, clearly, anything can happen.
Although most of the interview discussed Trump’s defeat in Iowa, I could not have said it better myself.