Charlie Cook: Democrats Bench So Thin No Choice But Clinton

The troubles besetting Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' rise have left the Democratic Party with so few choices that it may well have no other alternative to the former secretary of state, political analyst Charlie Cook said Saturday.

"Hav­ing pretty much de­cided early on to put all of their eggs in the Clin­ton bas­ket, they are now wor­ried that the bas­ket is flimsy," he wrote in The National Journal. "In the worst case, the party might turn to a [Vice President Joe] Biden, but don’t ex­pect it."

Clinton's plunging poll numbers over the email scandal have done very little to assuage party fears that she might not win the White House next year, Cook said.

"Al­though most Demo­crats still dis­miss the sub­stance of the con­tro­versy over her State De­part­ment emails, even the most starry-eyed must ac­know­ledge it has ex­posed her can­did­acy as far more fra­gile than in their worst night­mares."

Biden remains undecided on a run — and as far as Sanders is concerned, "Has any mem­ber of Con­gress dur­ing the past 23 years been less con­sequen­tial, less ef­fect­ive, and taken less ser­i­ously than Sanders?

"Is there any Demo­crat­ic sen­at­or less able to win a na­tion­wide gen­er­al elec­tion?" Cook asked.

Cook does float the name of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — "a name that would petrify Clinton’s headquarters" — and the analyst said he remained "luke­warm" about former Maryland Gov. Mar­tin O’Mal­ley.

"There’s little ques­tion the Demo­crat­ic bench of po­ten­tial con­tenders is pain­fully thin," Cook said.

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