 There’s already plenty of bad punditry regarding the chances of Hillary Clinton — who officially announced her candidacy on Sunday — to become the 45th president. And we’re not likely to learn a lot over the rest of 2015 to change that. Approval of Obama’s economic job performance has actually reached parity with disapproval for the first time since 2009: 
 
 If the economy continues to expand between now and the 2016 election, Obama’s approval rating will probably rise a little higher. Start with the fact that there’s no incumbent president running. Bill Clinton’s White House added a new wrinkle -- leaks that elevated the leaker at Clinton’s expense. However, Obama currently has an approval rating of about 45 percent, and a favorability rating of 48 percent — about average, in other words. His approval ratings on handling the economy have risen even more sharply. Still, the economy will matter a lot to voters, and a better economy will help Clinton, the candidate from the incumbent party. Furthermore, we know relatively little about what economic growth will look like a year from now, when the general election campaign heats up. The Emerging Democratic Majority thesis places a lot of weight on cohort replacement: Republicans fare best with the oldest voters, and Democrats with the youngest, so every new election cycle incrementally tilts the electoral playing field toward the Democrats. Democrats won more than 60 percent of the vote in the 1964 election, and then Republicans did the same eight years later. But it would have had to be very close indeed — within a percentage point or two. Our political system isn’t set up to debate whether or not our economic system needs real reform. The major disagreement over whether there is an “Emerging Democratic Majority” — the thesis that argues that Democrats have built a presidential majority that could only be defeated under unfavorable conditions — centers on an interpretive disagreement over the 2014 elections. Clinton’s support is, as it has been through most of her career, closely divided: 
 
 On the other hand, Republicans are much less popular. The closer these basic factors are, the more difference the candidates could make. We’re not breaking any news here, but Clinton and the Republican nominee are going to raise oodles of money — probably in excess of $1 billion each, beyond what Obama and Mitt Romney did in 2012. That’s well past the point of diminishing returns. Bill Curry Bill Curry was White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. Her political positions are essentially those of a “generic Democrat.” She’s neither a true centrist, nor extremely far to the left, so she’s not especially vulnerable to a challenge from either flank of her party. There were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, which created large constituencies to swing back and forth. Finally we can look at what the polls say right now. It is true that Clinton has, inevitably, lost much of the popularity she won when she was serving as secretary of State and largely removed from partisan politics. However, as we’ve been warning Democrats for a long time, a lot of this was predictable. Clinton’s numbers have often been about break-even when she’s been a highly partisan figure — during the early stages of the 2008 campaign, for example — and better only when she’s been above the fray of day-to-day partisan politics. Break-even favorability ratings don’t look so bad, however, when compared to some of the alternatives. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party’s barking-mad consensus. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images 
 
 Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election. We’ll soon know whether anyone is ready, willing and able to fight.
– New York magazine doesn't beat around the bush: "Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election." But not everyone agrees. A sampling of what the pundits are saying: In New York, Jonathan Chait argues that "the United States has polarized into stable voting blocs, and the Democratic bloc is a bit larger and growing at a faster rate." That should put Clinton in the White House, though it's not guaranteed. "She cannot promise her supporters a dramatic change or new possibilities," Chait notes. "Her worry is that ennui sets in among the base and yields a small electorate more like the kind that shows up at the midterms, which is an electorate Republicans can win." But at Salon, a former aide for Bill Clinton is concerned about his wife's strategy so far. "Republicans love to paint Democrats as elitists. It’s how the first two Bushes took out Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry—and how Jeb plans to take out Hillary," Bill Curry writes. And Clinton isn't helping herself. "When she says she and Bill were broke when they left the White House; when she sets her own email rules and says it was only for her own convenience; when she hangs out with the Davos, Wall Street, or Hollywood crowds, she makes herself a more inviting target." Meanwhile, statistician Nate Silver acknowledges that Clinton is "very likely to become the Democratic nominee." As for the general election, he writes at FiveThirtyEight, it could go either way. Silver questions the so-called "Emerging Democratic Majority" that plays a role in Chait's thinking. Right now, Clinton's favorability ratings are "break-even," and she's "so well-known … that it’s almost as if voters are dispensing with all the formalities and evaluating her as they might when she’s on the ballot next November. About half of them would like to see her become president and about half of them wouldn’t. Get ready for an extremely competitive election." While the pundits debate, Clinton is heading out on the trail in a van named "Scooby."