Sorry Democrats, Hillary Clinton is not a shoo-in for next presidential election.
Over at CNN someone named Jennifer Agiesta claimed yesterday that, “Hillary Clinton continues to be a dominant force heading into the 2016 election…” Why? Well because:
The former secretary of state maintains a broad lead over the field of potential Democratic challengers she could face in a nomination contest and sizable advantages over the leading contenders from the Republican side in general election match-ups.
With all due respect, this is an example of exactly how of how not to write, or think, about the 2016 election at this point.
Most voters aren’t paying attention to the 2016 race right now, and those few that are paying attention are that more likely to be strong partisans who will vote for their party regardless of who gets nominated. Instead of reflecting relative popularity among voters, all these sorts of polls reflect right now is the fact that Hillary Clinton is much better known than her potential Republican adversaries. That advantage will be completely gone by the time we get to October of next year.
This doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can learn about the outcome of the 2016 election right now of course. It’s just that rather than paying attention to articles like this you should be paying attention to the economy. If it continues to grow at a nice clip we’ll be looking at an advantage for Clinton, but if the economy goes back into recession then she, and the Democrats as a whole, are probably doomed.
Which basically means the whole race is a toss up right now because nobody knows what the economy is going to do over the next year and a half.
In short if you want to get an idea about what’s going to happen in 2016 you should be reading about policy statements from the Federal Reserve and ignoring things like silly CNN polls or the recent media feeding frenzy over Hillary Clinton’s past emails.
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A recession is highly unlikely. The savings from lower energy costs is being underestimated for the short-term. That not withstanding the Demos still need to start building up the national profiles of their other potential candidates. Elizabeth Warren is not enough to have in your bullpen. I don’t know what they’re waiting for.
A very fair assessment of the current landscape, John