I distinctly remember in November/ December of 2014, driving to work up a hill in the fog, and my partner and I listening to NPR on the way into the station, there being a segment about Hillary and their inevitability as the Democratic candidate. And I remember how in the conversation we had about it I brought up the point about how profoundly stupid and disastrous it would be to just coronation Hillary into being the nominee, because she was a profoundly weak candidate; maybe the weakest candidate possible for the moment.

First and foremost she'd telegraphed her run decades in advance, and had given the entire RW apparatus decades to prepare for her specific run. The opposition had been specifically preparing for this exact moment and if there was one person they were particularly prepared to run against, it was Hillary. Entire think tanks had been committed to that task for decades. It didn't matter if anything they presented was true or not; they'd have clips to run for days.

Second, her performance as secretary of state had been poor. She'd pissed off both the RW and progressives with her performance, the only ones truly appeased by her being slop-eating liberals. She was a total hawk, and basically extended the international hegemony established under Cheney an additional 8 years. She had no friends with regards to her role in government.

The third was that the Obama administration had clearly failed in their ability to make their campaigned upon policies, at least the ones the base which thrust Obama into power had prioritized, into power. Obama won on the back of the Occupy movement and the spirit which led the broadening of Occupy was the same spirit that ushered Obama in. And Obama, in so many ways, had betrayed that spirit. They took the side of corporations and banks in the manner of their governance. So any candidate coming from that administration was going to struggle.

And finally, media appeared to be completely oblivious to all of this. There is a kind of "head permanently nestled in ones own ass"-ness that only NPR and those for whom that broadcast is tailored to, the true liberals, can demonstrate. And it was already on full display.