There’s a new poll of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters. It shows Bernie Sanders with 32 percent of the vote, closing in on Hillary Clinton with 44 percent. This survey was released yesterday afternoon, shortly, as it happened, after I’d suggested on This Week that Hillary might not be so inevitable. After all: Hillary’s big speech Saturday was utterly unimpressive; her refusal to take a position on the fast track legislation that every senator and congressman has voted on, and that every other presidential candidate has weighed in on, shows an excessive caution that won’t end up working; and for all of her attempts to triangulate and pander, she has a long record of positions that put her at odds with the rising left-wing of the party. So I take her troubles seriously.
That doesn’t mean Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee, which seems awfully unlikely. But he could become this year’s Gene McCarthy, who damages the supposedly invincible frontrunner as McCarthy did LBJ in 1968, paving the way for a more plausible alternative–in 1968, Robert Kennedy, and this year presumably Elizabeth Warren. With a Warren entry around Thanksgiving as Hillary falters–and then wouldn’t Joe Biden also get in and take a shot?–we’d end up with a Democratic contest as entertaining as the Republican one. Maybe more so!
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