Never has the Democratic Party faced an upcoming presidential nomination like the one approaching in 2016.
Email and funding controversies aside, one candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, seems to have the inside track on the nomination all sewn up, in what the
BBC has referred to as more a "coronation" than a nomination.
And she has yet to formally announce her candidacy.
Real Clear Politics' roundup of polls has Clinton standing head and shoulders above her nearest competition, with 57.3 percent, as compared to Vice President Joe Biden, at 12.8 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at 12.3 percent and no one else even nearing double digits.
"The party may conduct one of the least competitive nominating contests in modern political history,"
The New York Times states. "Hillary Clinton is in as strong a position as any non-incumbent trying to win a major party nomination ever has been."
In 2008, Clinton was considered the virtually inevitable nominee, until she was derailed by Barack Obama, but this time around, the Times notes, is very different.
"No candidate, excluding incumbent presidents, has ever fared so well in the early primary polls as Mrs. Clinton. She holds about 60 percent of the vote of Democratic voters, a tally dwarfing the 40 percent she held this time in the last election cycle,"
the Times comments.
The Times notes that Clinton "is polling about 20 points higher than she was around this time eight years ago," and this time, there is no strong candidate like a Barack Obama or former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., to mount a serious challenge against her.
Nate Cohn, writing in the Times, concludes, "If a candidate has ever been inevitable for the nomination, it is Mrs. Clinton today." As for her competition, Cohn writes, "So far, it’s basically nonexistent."
In 2008, despite her Senate vote to authorize the war in Iraq, despite Democrats who did not want to see another Clinton in the White House and despite a 4-1 disadvantage among black voters, Clinton won 48 percent of the pledged Democratic delegates when she lost to Obama.
Cohn writes, "If she barely lost then, why would she lose now?"