At the very least, I expect that a protest candidate of marginal status will enter the race and do fairly well in the Iowa caucuses (20-30%). In the end, she may win Iowa by less than 50-60%.
Well sure, if Sanders challenges her, then her margin of victory in either Iowa or New Hampshire being less than 50 points seems like a good bet. Sanders would air criticism of her from the left that most Democratic voters haven't been exposed to yet because they're not paying attention to the race. So I don't think he'd remain stuck at 2% by any means. There'll be *some* traction for his message in the party, so getting something like 25% or more in one of the early states is very doable.
Even if it isn't Sanders, I bet that some vaguely qualified politician or prominent progressive figure will challenge her from the left and will receive a non-negligible number of votes because he/she will receive a some media coverage from MSNBC and a lot of media coverage from the progressive blogosphere and magazine circuit.
The Democratic Party is too diverse for Hillary Clinton to win early primary states by gargantuan numbers. Even a some dude candidate could achieve a respectable performance with the right strategy. I'm sure that some of Ron Paul's supporters would be more likely to vote for a far-left oddity running on drug legalization, isolationist foreign policy, anti-NSA etc than for Rand Paul.
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