This is not the time for the game of Democrats and Republicans. Most here at daily kos understand that, in a contest where only two potential parties can win, voting roughly for the party with a more compatible ideology is always the preferable choice. Electoral politics, as everyone here knows, often involves holding ones nose and pulling the lever regardless of one's own opinion about the candidate. I have had to do this a few times in my young voting life for democrats I didn't necessarily support, nor like as individuals. It sucks, and you feel like you have to take a shower afterward, but in American Electoral politics, and especially in Democratic politics, it has come to be expected.
But you know, we are a far way out from the Presidential election. What use is it now in asking the question "Who can win?" Because, the truth of the matter is, nobody yet knows who can win in the 2016 presidential landscape. So much changes in the blink of an eye in politics. One day we can be at peace, the next, involved in a conflagration that consumes many lives. One day we can be in a state of pure domestic tranquility, the next, our political system could be rocked to its very core by some crisis. With this rapidly changing, 24 hour, information binge political system that we have some how haphazardly established in the early 21st century, what makes anyone think that they know who will be able to win in 2016? We can hardly predict who is going to win in 2014, in six months. Who knows what will happen between now and November? Anyone who tells you that they do is lying to you It is possible to make guesses, place odds, and generalize about what will happen. But knowing is something entirely different and separate from making educated guesses.
"If not Hillary, who?" is the wrong question, because it is rooted in electoral politics, steeped in the tradition of the zero-sum game of presidential and party politics. It is not prudent, or useful, or even germane to the conversation to discuss party and electoral politics for two reasons: 1) most of us here know that, as stated above, in a game of D's and R's, D's win every time and 2) nobody knows the prevailing political, social, and political context in 2016. Like I said, we can make guesses, we can lay odds, but nobody knows
At this point in the game, 2 years out, we shouldn't be asking "who?" but "what?" as in "what do I want in a candidate?", "what do I want out of a candidate?" and "what is my ideal candidate?" What I am saying is, before asking who, establish a baseline, and then use whatever candidate that you pick in the future and push them toward that ideal. If we concede that Hillary is the candidate now, as she stands, there is no room to push her! Same goes with any other potential candidate, including the wonderful Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
We shouldn't be anointing anyone this early. We should be searching for our ideal, and then pushing all possible Democratic Presidential nominees toward that ideal. Period.
I personally do not want HRC as the nominee myself, but if she does end up the nominee I want to be able to push her. Anointing her now just tips our hand and kills our influence.
Just my two cents of course.