Charlie Cook: For Clinton, It’s Time to Stay Cool in Iowa and New Hampshire

National Journal:

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The Clin­ton cam­paign’s chal­lenge is to rep­lic­ate as closely as pos­sible the sup­port and voter turnout levels that the Obama cam­paign man­aged in 2008 and 2012. It will be ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to do. The fact that she turns 69 in Septem­ber doesn’t help, be­cause she could face a Re­pub­lic­an op­pon­ent nearly a quarter-cen­tury young­er. Cer­tain GOP nom­in­ees might drive up Demo­crat­ic turnout for her, but oth­ers might not seem as threat­en­ing, rais­ing the pos­sib­il­ity that many Demo­crat­ic voters will stay at home.

A hard move to the left would make her job of win­ning over in­de­pend­ent and mod­er­ate voters in the gen­er­al elec­tion even more chal­len­ging. In­de­pend­ents tend to have very com­plic­ated views of Clin­ton, see­ing her on one hand as smart, know­ledge­able, and com­pet­ent, but on the oth­er hand as not par­tic­u­larly likable or trust­worthy. Big ideo­lo­gic­al swings over the course of the cam­paign aren’t likely to help her cred­ib­il­ity.

It can’t be fun for Clin­ton to be Sanders’s piñata this month and next, but for March 1 on, it shouldn’t be that bad, and there is no point win­ning the nom­in­a­tion if you render your­self un­elect­able in the fall.