Is Hillary really in trouble?

[IceSpear]

Define "in trouble." If you mean "can she lose?", then yes, she certainly can lose, and that has always been true. If you mean from factors now? Absolutely not. Polls this early mean little, and as the options in your poll show, much of it is just from Trump's nomination bounce and the Sanders stuff.

[IceSpear]

If anyone could blow a surefire win, it would be Hillary. However, Trump is mainly just getting a temporary bounce from the fact that the GOP primary ended before the Dem primary.

Where does this meme even come from? Hillary won a Senate race as a carpetbagger and almost beat Barack Obama of all people in 2008 and was able to secure the nomination in 2016 despite a huge anti-establishment sentiment in America.

Even if you could argue that she's a bad candidate somehow, there's obviously plenty who have been way worse. How about Martha Coakley blowing a race in Massachusetts twice. Or Bruce Braley, Denny Rehberg, Rick Berg, Jeb Bush, etc.

Sexism and saltiness.

[IceSpear]

If anyone could blow a surefire win, it would be Hillary. However, Trump is mainly just getting a temporary bounce from the fact that the GOP primary ended before the Dem primary.

Where does this meme even come from? Hillary won a Senate race as a carpetbagger and almost beat Barack Obama of all people in 2008 and was able to secure the nomination in 2016 despite a huge anti-establishment sentiment in America.

Even if you could argue that she's a bad candidate somehow, there's obviously plenty who have been way worse. How about Martha Coakley blowing a race in Massachusetts twice. Or Bruce Braley, Denny Rehberg, Rick Berg, Jeb Bush, etc.

Hillary. Because she'll win Massachusetts in November, unlike Martha Coakley.

LOL.

Well she certainly won it in the primary, when it was supposed to be a certain someone's turf.

[IceSpear]

If anyone could blow a surefire win, it would be Hillary. However, Trump is mainly just getting a temporary bounce from the fact that the GOP primary ended before the Dem primary.

Where does this meme even come from? Hillary won a Senate race as a carpetbagger and almost beat Barack Obama of all people in 2008 and was able to secure the nomination in 2016 despite a huge anti-establishment sentiment in America.

The main reason she was able to secure the nomination is because she secured a bunch of early endorsements and donors and used that to scare away at least 5 potential candidates. I mean seriously, an out and out socialist with no super pac, zero name recognition coming into the race, and an officially independent party affiliation has won 21 contests against her so far, had spurts of time where he seemed like a real threat, has kept her from clinching the nomination before June despite doing terribly among superdelegates, and may defeat her in the most populous state. She might have actually lost against a more sane opponent. I bet Biden and Warren and Klobuchar and maybe even Hickenlooper all spend time thinking "Wow. If a socialist is doing this well, what would have happened if I was in the race?". You can try and knock down each of these potential candidacies, but the reality is you never know.

Hillary should count herself lucky she is running against such a terrible opponent. I honestly feel she'd be a severe underdog to Kasich, Rubio or Paul.

None of those people (with the possible exception of Warren) would've been able to raise anywhere near as much money as Bernie has. It's fairly clear that the left wing of the Democratic Party was hungering for someone who made no bones about being far to the left. I'm not sure why you act like being a socialist is a liability. In the primary, it was clearly an asset among the group of people he was trying to appeal to. Hickenlooper and Klobuchar would've gone nowhere, just like O'Malley. Too little of a contrast with Hillary and easily outflanked on the left by Sanders. Biden would've had the stature and name recognition of being VP, but little else. His voting record was to the right of hers and she had a much stronger relationship with the core parts of the Democratic Party that weren't already solidly behind Sanders.

Nothing I've seen has led me to change my mind about what I was saying over the past 2 years: the only one who possibly could've beaten her was Warren. And even she would have been a heavy underdog.

By the way, officially clinching the nomination quickly is next to impossible assuming you have remotely credible opposition (and they don't drop out) due to the proportional rules. It took an unopposed (besides perennial candidates) Obama until April to do so.

[IceSpear]

Well let's be honest, the only reason Hillary has done so "terribly" during these primaries is because she's been up against and opponent who has refused to drop out at almost every normal juncture where a regular candidate would have. That's why these fractures exist and why it's the second closest Democratic primary in history. Hell, there were compelling reasons for him to drop out after Super Tuesday, but certainly most regular folks would have gotten out after the rout in Ohio and all those other states that night.

Him staying in has kept it "close" only in a pretty phony sense. And again, his selfishness continues to hurt the party and make Hillary look "weak" even though there's very little truth to that. It all about appearances.

I think this is self-inflicted by Clinton. The traditional move at this point would be an olive branch and some concessions to create a united front. Has she done anything beyond demanding that the Clinton flag be run up the flagpole, and that everyone salute it?

And it's not just Sanders. She's going after Trump on effing GUN RIGHTS. That's an idiotic move on so many levels. It looks like she's going for a Fool's Mate on herself.

My current hope is that she goes down in flames before the convention and we get a competent politician instead of Hillary. I'll take pretty much anyone, from Sanders to Biden to Webb.

Webb is such a competent politician that he couldn't crack 1%, dropped out after raising about $20, and nearly lost his 2006 primary to a Some Dude lobbyist. lol. You realize he essentially endorsed Trump as well, right? I think that small detail would complicate matters.

Biden is such a competent politician that he dropped out in 1988 due to plagiarism, couldn't crack 1% in 2008 and dropped out after raising about $20, and didn't run this time because he knew Hillary would clean his clock, which he outright admitted.

[IceSpear]

We must remember expectations were always high. Hillary has been considered an prohibitive favorite for a long time and I remember some of our posters claiming she'll do as well in the primaries as Chuck Schumer in his NY Senate races.

So, even though she's winning against Sanders by a healthy margin, the challenge makes her look weak.

That's one way of characterizing things. But once again, please note the following.

The list of people that Donald Trump has defeated in order to secure the Republican nomination:

Jeb Bush
Ben Carson
Chris Christie
Ted Cruz
Carly Fiorina
Jim Gilmore
Lindsey Graham
Mike Huckabee
Bobby Jindal
John Kasich
George Pataki
Rand Paul
Rick Perry
Marco Rubio
Rick Santorum
Scott Walker

The list of people that Hillary Clinton is trying to defeat in order to secure the Democratic nomination:

Bernie Sanders

The challenge isn't what's making her look weak, it's the starting point of this election cycle and the nature of the challenger, that's what's making her look weak.

So you include Jim Gilmore and George Pataki on the Republican side, but omit Lincoln Chafee, Jim Webb, Martin O'Malley, and Larry Lessig?

[IceSpear]

We must remember expectations were always high. Hillary has been considered an prohibitive favorite for a long time and I remember some of our posters claiming she'll do as well in the primaries as Chuck Schumer in his NY Senate races.

So, even though she's winning against Sanders by a healthy margin, the challenge makes her look weak.

That's one way of characterizing things. But once again, please note the following.

The list of people that Donald Trump has defeated in order to secure the Republican nomination:

Jeb Bush
Ben Carson
Chris Christie
Ted Cruz
Carly Fiorina
Jim Gilmore
Lindsey Graham
Mike Huckabee
Bobby Jindal
John Kasich
George Pataki
Rand Paul
Rick Perry
Marco Rubio
Rick Santorum
Scott Walker

The list of people that Hillary Clinton is trying to defeat in order to secure the Democratic nomination:

Bernie Sanders

The challenge isn't what's making her look weak, it's the starting point of this election cycle and the nature of the challenger, that's what's making her look weak.

Yes, but it's human nature to want to have choice. It was only natural that a viable challenger would emerge, even if the viability came not from any of the challenger's own characteristics, but from people wanting an alternative. If Sanders wasn't in the race, O'Malley probably would have gained traction instead. Sanders is a weak candidate, and it shows in the results.

So what distinguishes Sanders from someone like Bill Bradley? Why has the former appeared to be so successful? Arguably the answer is a combination of simple geography and momentum. If Sanders had lost New Hampshire, his candidacy would have been toast.

So this notion that Bernie Sanders is special is just silly. In the alternate timelines without him Hillary still faced an insurgent challenger.

I actually think Martin O'Malley would've been the Bill Bradley that so many people thought Sanders was going to be a year ago. I don't see him carrying a single state, but the contrarians in NH likely would've given Hillary a scare.

Sanders has certainly been helped by political gravity and voters naturally wanting a choice, along with the media doing everything they could to destroy Hillary and manufacture a horse race, but he definitely accomplished a lot on his own merits as well. He invigorated the left wing of the party in a way very few others would have been able to. I think only Warren could've possibly improved on his performance.

[IceSpear]

Has Hillary ever surged in polls DURING a campaign?   

Uh, yes?

The polls showed the 2000 Senate election to be a dead heat. She won by double digits. She won NH in 2008 when every poll showed Obama winning easily. She skyrocketed up after the first debate and the Benghazi hearing. Earlier on the national polls were deadlocked, now she's up double digits. I'm sure there's more examples too.