When will Hillary Clinton give up her candidacy ?

Just so I dont remind you of you and Lash. I at least give you the privledge of disagreeing with me without insulting your intellagence.

Hillary Clinton and the audacity of political realism
by Ezra Klein on January 28, 2016

Like many people, I’ve described the competition between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as an argument between competing theories of change, which it is. But underlying that argument is a deeper dispute about what’s wrong with America, what brought us to the state we’re in.

To oversimplify a bit — but only, I think, a bit — the Sanders view is that money is the root of all evil. Or more specifically, the corrupting influence of big money, of the 1 percent and the corporate elite, is the overarching source of the political ugliness we see all around us.

The Clinton view, on the other hand, seems to be that money is the root of some evil, maybe a lot of evil, but it isn’t the whole story. Instead, racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice are powerful forces in their own right. This may not seem like a very big difference — both candidates oppose prejudice, both want to reduce economic inequality. But it matters for political strategy.

As you might guess, I’m on the many-evils side of this debate.

In mid-2014, Noam Scheiber tracked down 10 former Iowa precinct captains for Barack Obama and asked whom they were supporting in 2016. The answer? Overwhelmingly, they were backing Hillary Clinton — the very candidate they had worked so hard to beat in 2008. Seven of the 10 ex-Obama organizers told him they'd become "enthusiastic" Clinton supporters, and an eighth said she was "slowly coming around."

The reassessment of Hillary Clinton was driven in part by the disillusionments of the Obama years. "Watching the system not change really made an impact on these people," Scheiber told me. "I don't think they want to get burned again."

In 2008, Obama promised to transform American politics. By 2014, it was clear he had failed. Even Obama admits his presidency hasn't fulfilled the hopes raised by his campaign. "A singular regret for me is the fact that our body politic has become more polarized, the language, the spirit has become meaner than when I came in," he told Politico.

If Obama was surprised by his presidency's failure to change the tenor of American politics, Clinton probably wasn't. She had always been clear that Obamaism was, in her view, shot through with naiveté about the nature of both American politics and Republican opposition.

"I could stand up here and say, 'Let's just get everybody together, Let's get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing. And everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,'" Clinton said in 2008. "Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear."

As the 2016 election came closer into view, Clinton looked more dominant than she had even in 2008 — her poll numbers were higher, her challengers weaker, her endorsements more impressive. Liberals, chastened by the disappointments of the Obama years, seemed to recognize Clinton's prescience. "It may be that coming out of this period, where Congress has been so obstinate, so difficult to move ... that people are looking for someone whose central skill is how to work the power structure," Larry Grisolano, a top Obama pollster, told Scheiber.

Or maybe not.

With less than a week to go before Iowa, Bernie Sanders has pulled even with Clinton in the polls. He has done so without the money, institutional backing, and deep intraparty divisions over Iraq that powered Obama's 2008 win. It is, by any measure, an extraordinary political achievement. But it also clarifies the challenge Clinton faced in 2008, and faces this year.

How do you win as a political realist when the reality of politics is this grim?

There's never been anything audacious about hope

According to our latest polls-plus forecast, Hillary Clinton has a 66% chance of winning the Iowa caucuses.

Our forecasts don’t produce a single expected vote share for each candidate, but rather generate a range of possible outcomes, shown below. The range will be wider or narrower under certain circumstances: For instance, it narrows as the election gets closer. Our estimate of each candidate’s chance of winning the state is based on these ranges.

“Where is the enthusiasm for Hillary? It’s a fair question,” admits Lynn Forester de Rothschild, 61, a loyal donor and fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton. When Mr. Obama won the nomination in 2008, Ms. de Rothschild resigned in fury from the Democratic platform committee and marched out of the convention leading a group called PUMA — “party unity my ass’” — to vote for John McCain.

“Shame on us — Democrats and particularly friends of Hillary — because we allowed Republicans and the media to paint a caricature of Hillary for far too long,” Ms. de Rothschild told me.

For graph and explanation as to how they conduct their forecast go to 538

Here's the reality. Who knows what we will learn in the future? And this has nothing to do with the political impact of the "emails controversy". But as a legal matter, the chances of Hillary Clinton facing any kind of indictment are very, very low.

Start with the fact that as far as we know, she is not actually even being investigated for anything, let alone facing a looming indictment. The simple facts, as we know them, just don't put her in line for an indictment. The first reason is the facts, which rest heavily on intent and reckless negligence. The second is tradition and DOJ regulations which make professional prosecutors very leery of issuing indictments that might be perceived or in fact influence an election. This was my thinking. But as the press coverage has become increasingly heated, I started trying to figure out if there was something I was missing - some fact I didn't know, some blindspot in my perception. So I've spoken to a number of law profs and former federal prosecutors - based on the facts we know now even from the most aggressive reporting. Not like, is this theoretically possible? Not, what the penalties would be if it happened. But is an indictment at all likely or is this whole idea very far-fetched. To a person, very far-fetched.

So why the press coverage? I think it's a combination of reasons. The most irreducible and perhaps most significant is simply prestige reporter derp and general ignorance of the legal system. Second is journalists' perennial inability to resist a process story. And third, let's be honest, wingnut page views.