WASHINGTON — It is the end of the year 2014 and the beginning of 2015. Perhaps it is an appropriate time to think about what we are to be confronted with in the presidential year 2016. Ever since the autumn electoral rout of the Democrats, we have been confronted by news stories of the looming presidential prospects of Hillary Rodham Clinton and hints about the rise of the presidential prospects of Elizabeth Warren. Only rarely is there a news story about the presidential prospects of the Republicans, though I count more than 25 possible Republican candidates. On the Democrats side we only hear of two, Clinton and Warren.

Well, those are the kinds of media we have in the land of the free. They amount to a media almost wholly stocked by Democratic operatives. So we shall be hearing about first Hillary and then Elizabeth for months to come. Yet let me tell you at the outset of the new year: Hillary’s chances to return to the White House are by my lights negligible, and Elizabeth’s chances for the White House are not much better.