Where Is The Obama Of 2016? No Viable Dem Challenger In Sight Yet

In the nascent 2016 presidential campaign, two seemingly contradictory things are still simultaneously true.

Nobody actually has any idea what the field is going to look like by the time people start caucusing in Iowa. And yet Hillary Clinton is undeniably the historically prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination, should she choose to run — far more than she was in 2008, when a hot-shot first-term senator with some star power of his own toppled her White House ambitions.

It is a reminder of the unpredictability of presidential politics. Things can happen, minds do change. But for the moment anyway, there has perhaps never been a more sure thing than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

A new CNN poll released Tuesday illustrates the state of the race. Clinton attracts 65 percent of the Democratic primary vote in the national poll; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has so far said she isn’t running, ranks a distant second at 10 percent. Vice President Joe Biden sits at 9 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is openly mulling a bid, is back at 5 percent. Nobody else earns more than 1 percent.

In sizing up Clinton’s 2016 changes, some people seem to remember that she was the favorite in 2008, too, so they’re looking for the next Obama who might displace her. A Ready for Warren draft effort is in some ways the personification of that mindset among some on the left. But Clinton’s polling advantage heading into 2016 is far beyond what she had in 2008.

The CNN poll puts Clinton up 55 points against the field. She never approached such as lead in 2008. She rarely topped 30 points, in a couple clear outlier polls, according to the Real Clear Politics archive. A December 2006 USA Today poll had Clinton at 33 percent and Obama at 20 percent. The same month, CNN gave Clinton a lead of 37 percent to Obama’s 15 percent.

Sizable, but not insurmountable, as history would show. Certainly not the 50-plus-point lead that Clinton has been maintaining in almost every 2016 poll.

But another feature of those polls from early in the 2008 cycle should give all election prognosticators pause. Former Vice President Al Gore was routinely taking between 11 and 14 percent of the primary vote. At this point, figures like George Pataki, Chuck Hagel, Bill Richardson and Wesley Clark were being polled. On the Republican side, national polls showed New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani primed to take the party’s nomination.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll in December 2006 showed Giuliani up 34 percent to 26 percent over eventual GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). He would eventually jump out to double-digit lead in early 2007, sometimes besting his competitors by more than 20 points, per the RCP archive. But, of course, the generally moderate Giuliani took an unorthodox strategy to avoid more conservative voters in the early primaries, failed spectacularly, and all that polling was effectively for naught.

Clinton’s allies seem aware of how this all can look. “Nobody wants a coronation” is the popular saying these days. “I have never assumed, and I think anybody would have been in error to assume, that our party would just give its nomination to anyone,” Craig Smith, a longtime adviser to both Clintons and now a senior adviser to the Ready for Hillary super PAC, told the Washington Post.

Smith might be learning all the lessons that Giuliani and Gore’s polling should offer. But while things can undoubtedly change, the fact of the matter is that — right now — there isn’t an Obama figure in 2016. It at least looks like all Clinton has to do is decide to run.