Hillary Clinton and Inevitability: This Time Is Different

Nate Cohn

FEB. 19, 2015

Whenever I mention that Hillary Clinton is an overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination — and would be even if Senator Elizabeth Warren ran — the conversation usually comes back to 2008. “She was supposed to be inevitable last time,” the refrain goes, “and she lost.”

I get it. I remember that Mrs. Clinton was “inevitable,” and I see why today’s discussions of Mrs. Clinton’s strength sound familiar.

But there is no equivalence between Mrs. Clinton’s strength then and now. She was never inevitable eight years ago. If a candidate has ever been inevitable — for the nomination — it is Mrs. Clinton today.

She was certainly a strong candidate in 2008. But by this time in that cycle, it was already clear that she would not cruise to the nomination. Yes, she held an impressive 40 percent or so of the Democratic vote in national polls, leading Senator Barack Obama by 15 points. That, however, is not inevitability.

Candidates with a case for inevitability — the ones who started as big favorites and won the nomination without a long fight, like Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996 — all held at least 50 percent of the vote in early polls, and led their opposition by enormous margins. The record of candidates with similar standing to Mrs. Clinton, like Gerald Ford in 1976 or Ted Kennedy in 1980, is not at all perfect. Kennedy lost, and Ford faced a protracted contest.

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