Hilary, the Quasi-Incumbent

I only watched Hilary on one and a half of the five Sunday talkfests yesterday. She was on all five. She was fine on Stephanopoulos. She seemed a bit tight with Timmy Russert, but he's pretty annoying anyway so I turned him (not her) off.

With Bush increasingly irrelevant as a political force or a political drag outside of DC, with the Republican candidates trying to out-do one another being idiot flip-floppers, and with Hilary's firm plurality support in the Democratic party, she's increasingly the one to beat, i.e., the incumbent. Except she isn't the incumbent. So we'll count her as a quasi-incumbent.

If several of the Democrats dropped out, those not supporting Clinton might coalesce around one of those remaining. But since they all think they'll be the one to take advantage of that, it's not likely to happen.

So she's running an incumbent's race.