Hillary Clinton, Welcome to the White House!

If she wants to run in 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton could have the easiest walk into the White House of any candidate in either party since, well, one has to go back a very long way. Maybe to Reagan in '84. LBJ in '64, or Eisenhower in '52, or even FDR in 1936. The presidency is looking like it's hers to lose, more than ever.

The reasons are becoming more obvious with each passing crisis of Republicanism, but are even starker now in the wake of the GOP's embarrassing implosion over the shutdown and debt-ceiling fight. This is an opposition party in such a state of extreme dysfunction that talk of a third-party split in 2016 is almost irrelevant. Why would you need a third-party split to win—as Bill did, recall, cheating George H.W. Bush out of a second term in 1992 thanks to the Ross Perot candidacy—when the base and establishment of the GOP are no longer on speaking terms?"

I agree, but I'd take Hirsh's point even farther. Given district boundaries, the shutdown debacle probably won't deliver the House to the Democrats in 2014, although a repeat of this destructive approach in February, when the debt ceiling again comes into play, could change that situation. However, the damage already done to the Republican Party in the polls and the mutual disdain that is now apparent between its establishment and Tea Party wings have probably doomed GOP efforts to capture the Senate next year.

I think it's safe to assume that at the moment, Hillary intends to run. That became a little clearer this week in a private appearance here in Atlanta, when she spent a lot of time pointing out that Vice President Joe Biden, her only plausible rival in 2016, had opposed the operation that took out Osama bin Laden. (Greg Bluestein and Jim Galloway have that story here). That wasn't done lightly or without purpose.

With Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket, with turnout high as she draws millions of women to the polls on her behalf, it's easy to see the Democrats riding her coattails into a House majority. In the Senate that year, Democrats will defend just 10 seats while Republicans will have to defend 24, seven in states carried by Barack Obama in 2012. So a 60-vote margin in the Senate is also quite plausible. That prospect has to make a Hillary run even more likely, because it would give her the votes in Washington to have an impact on policy in a way that her husband never really did.

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2013/oct/17/dems-2016-looks-be-setting-perfectly/