A new Bloomberg National poll finds that 72% of Democrats and independents said it would be a good thing for the Democratic Party if Hillary Clinton were to face a “serious” challenger for the presidential nomination. Well, it seems that she will have at least three challengers. Whether they are serious depends on three things: 1) Hillary’s performance; 2) the voters; and 3) the challengers themselves. Remember, Hillary is riding high in the polls not because of some accident. The Democratic base overwhelmingly wants her to be their nominee, while, contrarily, they want a serious challenge for her. This is probably because a serious contested and drawn out battle between Obama and Clinton in 2008 strengthen Obama and prepared him for McCain in the fall. Well, there is no Obama on the scene, and the conditions are not there for an Obama to emerge this time to challenge Clinton.
Nate Cohn: “The Republican primary battle has been called a wide-open contest — the ‘deepest’ and ‘strongest’ field in many cycles. It is full of the party’s rising stars and hopefuls, like Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal, alongside the most formidable name in Republican politics: Bush.”
“But the campaign is not nearly as open as it looks. Many of the candidates who have received the most news media attention have little or no chance of winning the nomination. Instead, two figures — Jeb Bush and Mr. Walker — have quickly moved to the head of the pack. Perhaps only Mr. Rubio has a good chance to join them at the top.”
First Read: “In the new MSNBC/Telemundo poll, which contained a Latino oversample, Democrats enjoy a 31-point advantage in party ID among Latinos, 47%-16%, with 36% identifying themselves as independents. That’s compared with Democrats having 7-point advantage among all voters in the poll. But get this: Political ideology among Latinos is almost identical to all voters… In other words, there are plenty of conservative Latinos. They’re just not willing to identify themselves as Republicans.”