It’s official now: Hillary Clinton has entered the presidential race. At the very least, this development guarantees that President Obama’s party will have one candidate to choose who enjoys near-universal name recognition and has a proven donor network ready to fund the long campaign. It means that unless they go elsewhere in search of a miracle, Democrats will not be any more hopeless in 2016 than Hillary Clinton is as a candidate.

Even so, this may not turn out to be the happy moment that the more naïve among the Democrats might have expected. They must now take a moment to evaluate and understand just how precarious their situation is.