Democrats have a pathetic bench.  While the GOP can look at young and bright faces like Walker, Cruz, Rand, Rubio, Jindal, Martinez, Haley, and Pence, which Democrats besides Hillary have a realistic shot at winning the White House? 

Elizabeth Warren is an Ivy-League leftist who has won precisely one election, in Massachusetts.  She is almost as old as Hillary, and although, at only about $14 million, she is not nearly as rich as Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton, Warren still looks utterly disconnected from the vast majority of America.

Joe Biden?  He is a walking gaffe machine whose principal political asset is that he seems utterly hapless and confused.  Biden in the presidential debates would almost certainly make several absurd and damaging slips.  America will be sick to death of Obama by 2016, and his principal stooge, Biden, will inherit all this national nausea. 

Whom else can Democrats turn to as their champion?  Jerry Brown is ancient, and he has held just about every elective office possible in California.  He looks and acts just like a tired career politician born into a political dynasty.  Andrew Cuomo is also a dynastic heir who offers nothing at all to the America outside the Northeast.

The reality for Democrats is that decades of playing safe, enforcing a sort of crushing ideological conformity, and avoiding real fights like the Mafia avoids public spats have left them with a limited number of potential nominees for the presidency.

Democrats need Hillary, but does she need them?  Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton has always lusted for power, for wealth, and for influence – that is why she stayed in a loveless marriage to a despicable cad like Bill so long – but there is another aspect to this vain, shallow creature.

Hillary abhors personal risk.  It was Bill, not Hillary, who ran for Congress, for Arkansas attorney general, and for governor in Arkansas.  Hillary was safely perched in the Rose Law Firm, gaining money and position at minimal personal risk.  Hillary has been involved as a candidate in only three contests: New York Senate race in 2000, New York Senate re-election in 2006, and the Democrat nomination race of 2008.  She always picked the easiest, safest contests.

So in 2000, Hillary, an Illinois native and an Arkansas expatriate who had never really lived in New York, decided to run for office from this safest of Democrat strongholds.  She was, of course, still first lady as well.  She shoved aside a real New Yorker, Nita Lowery, and faced a relatively weak Rick Lazio in the general election.  And the 2006 midterm was a Democrat year, so Clinton faced no real battles for re-election to the Senate, either.

The 2008 presidential race was supposed to be her turn, but she hamstrung herself with a lame performance, against which not even all the powers of a past two-term president and all the fawning exposure the leftist media had given her could prevail.

Why might Hillary decide against running next year? 

First, the country will be sicker of Obama than even in 2014, which means that she would have to run away from him to shake that unpopularity.  There is no safe way for her to do that without potentially turning off millions of black voters, which would cost Democrats across the board in 2016.

Second, however tired folks are of Republicans, they are even more tired of Democrats.  Not since FDR and the New Deal have Democrats been viewed so negatively by voters.  At every level of government, state and congressional, except the White House, Democrats are a distinct minority. 

Third, she will be almost 70 in 2016.  She is as familiar to Americans as a tattered house slipper.  Republicans will not say that; the camera, however, will.  Appearances mean everything in American politics, and Hillary will be the most unappealing presidential nominee since William Howard Taft more than a century ago.

What this means is that Hillary may not choose to run in 2016.  If she runs and fails, then her political life and all the easy money she gets from dull speeches could be over.  Leftists like Hillary, of course, care only about themselves.  They have no grand principles at all.  So the only real question is this: can Hillary, personally, profit more from jumping into the 2016 presidential race or “magnanimously” stepping aside?  Don’t be surprised if she decides that she is better off with the latter.