HILLARY THE LOSER? – AT 9:22 A.M. ET:  A recent poll showed Hillary Clinton beating any potential Republican challenger, but we argued here that the numbers weren't all that impressive.  In fact, they were flashing red for the Clinton campaign.  Andrew Malcolm of IBD has looked at the same numbers and adds his perspective.  Yes, Hillary has problems:

Well, that didn't take as long as expected.

In just the past month, when no one with a real life was thinking about the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton's massive poll lead over every single potential Republican opponent has collapsed.

In a hypothetical match-up, her margin over Jeb Bush, the closest GOP president, was cut in half to eight points this month, 45%-37%, according to Zogby. That's down from a whopping 15-point lead in December. Similarly, the former first lady's 15-point margin over Mitt Romney slid to nine points, 46%-37%.

Still sizable margins, to be sure. But trending uncomfortably in the wrong direction even before an announcement, as Clinton goes to ground to plot her campaign, assemble staff and devise a credible rationale other than gender for why Americans should let her move back into the White House, this time in the West Wing.

Most Democrats won't take much convincing. She's her party's overwhelming heir apparent, which actually hasn't worked out too well in recent U.S. political history for Al Gore, John McCain, Romney or Hillary herself in 2008.

But she'll need to convince significant numbers of independents and even Republicans on a shifting political landscape that's been trending toward conservative states, both in the census and recent elections.

Even with veterans of the president's winning campaigns jumping over for Obama 3.0, that could be a hefty challenge given Clinton's quarter-century of public controversies; HillaryCare's website didn't fail, but that's because she didn't have one. Her brief Senate career was highlighted by nothing really.
And her four years as the well-traveled face of Obama's disastrous foreign policies that allowed Syria to decay into bloody chaos, Iraq to go it alone militarily, permitting ISIS to fester and spread, and post-Gaddafi Libya to become one large al-Qaida training camp.

Then there's the deadly Benghazi debacle with its inexplicable security lapses, still under investigation by a House Select committee.

COMMENT:  By 2016 Hillary Clinton will have been a national figure for more years than Franklin D. Roosevelt.  People simply may be tired of her.  And her absence of a record of true accomplishment, as noted by Andrew Malcolm, won't help.

We're being told that Hillary is readying her campaign.  Maybe she'll decide to spend more time with her grandchild instead.

January 26, 2015