Tony Keller is editorial page editor.
Having finally locked down her party's nomination, the odds are now overwhelmingly in favour of Hillary Clinton becoming the 45th president of the United States. Then again, at this time nine years ago, she was the odds on favourite to become the 44th president. She has a history of defying the odds. That's because her campaign has an Achilles heel, and her name is Hillary Clinton.
Last fall, before the race for her party's nomination had officially even started, virtually the entire Democratic Party establishment had already pledged itself to her. The only challenger was Bernie Sanders, an aging fringe player with zero national profile, who was barely even a Democrat. His campaign launch had the budget of a lemonade stand. And yet once voting started, he turned out to be nearly as popular as her. He gained strength as the race went on and her planned cakewalk to a coronation developed into a bruising, state-by-state war that went on for months. Even now, Mr. Sanders has yet to concede and his supporters continue to beset her.
But though there are still a few primaries left (including several on Tuesday), Ms. Clinton has finally secured enough delegates to be assured of winning her party's nomination at next month's convention in Philadelphia. She can now turn to the general election – which, just like the primaries, she's entering with enormous advantages.
Her opponent is Donald Trump, a man almost comically unqualified to be president. And while he has a core of supporters, the number of Americans with a negative opinion of him is extremely high, even among Republicans. That's why, beginning this winter, panicked GOP strategists began predicting an electoral defeat of unprecedented proportions. Recent national polls, however, show Ms. Clinton enjoying only a small lead.
Stacked up against Mr. Trump or Mr. Sanders, Hillary Clinton would make the best president – by a long shot. But winning an election is a sales job. And Ms. Clinton, for all her smarts and her experience, for all her decades of working the dark back rooms, is not a very good front-of-the-house politician. She's kind of terrible at it.
Yes, a lot of conservative Americans react reflexively to the Clinton name. Yes, some male voters are biased against her because she's a woman. But there's more to it than that. Some people were born for sales, and some people really were not. She has remarkable powers of anti-persuasion.
Watch a few minutes from any one of her rallies. Then watch a few minutes from the other two candidates.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both have "it" – that weird star quality that causes people to look and listen. Both are polarizing, but are they ever good television. A Sanders rally is just a man at a microphone, talking for an hour, laying out his program, and laying into what's wrong with the world. It is as old school as it gets, and he sounds sincere, uncompromising and uncontrived. For his voting base, which has turned out to be a lot larger than expected, it works.
As for The Donald, his speeches, regardless of what you think of their content, come across as similarly unrehearsed and genuine. Even when he's changing his mind, he makes it sound like a display of authenticity – see how confident and mature I am? – rather than a flip-flop. And when he's being offensive, it only reinforces the idea that he's the conservative version of the anti-politician, goring sacred cows and speaking truth to elite power. American viewers, not some committee of experts, made him a reality television star.
Ms. Clinton, in contrast, has a way of embodying what voters hate about the word "politician." She never sounds entirely convinced of her own words. She also usually sounds like she's still working on graduating from Toastmasters – her canned lines arrive barely reheated, whereas those other two candidates make boilerplate fresh and urgent. They feel their words; she sounds like she's being forced to read them. She's no Bill Clinton.
Then there's her next problem: Just as in 2008, she's in a race against a messianic figure. But to many voters, she comes across as a Machiavellian schemer. On Saturday Night Live, Kate McKinnon's brilliant impersonation portrays her as someone who just wants voters to tell her what they want her to say and be, so she can say it and be it. But if she really were that cynical – if she were the candidate willing to do anything to achieve power – she'd be better at covering it up. Instead, recent polls show that a majority of Americans have an unfavourable impression of Ms. Clinton. Roughly six out of 10 voters don't like her – making her as disliked as Mr. Trump. If that's accurate it's unfair, but political life often is.
And then there's the fact that in an election year when so many voters are mad as hell at politics in general, and at their own parties – a wave powering Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders – Ms. Clinton is the candidate of the status quo. And as was the case in 2008, a lot of people want to vote for something more than more of the same. In fact, much of Mr. Sanders's ability to keep winning primaries throughout the spring, even when he no longer had any realistic hope of capturing the nomination, had to do with his eagerness to take shots at the party he wants to lead. Ms. Clinton is the ultimate party insider, whereas Mr. Sanders is basically running against the Democratic Party. That goes doubly for Mr. Trump. In normal times, not wanting to blow up the system is a plus with voters. These may not be normal times.
Ms. Clinton is going into the election with huge demographic advantages: Her party's coalition of blacks, Hispanics and educated, younger Americans is growing, whereas the Republican base of white and older people is shrinking. For Mr. Trump to win, he's going to have to persuade a record number of white voters to switch to the Republicans. That's why Ms. Clinton and the Democrats are likely to win, and win big.
But at least one part of the Democratic base that Mr. Obama and Mr. Sanders activated – young voters – is fickle. They came out for Hope and Change in '08, and they're Feeling the Bern right now, but can Ms. Clinton rally them?
Mr. Trump may do the work for her, by scaring them into voting against him. His recent attacks on the judge presiding over a civil suit involving Trump University, alleging bias because he's "Mexican," is toxic for American politics, and a gift to Ms. Clinton. It may tear the GOP apart, handing her the election. But until now, The Donald has proved remarkably adept at strategically inflaming and calming people. All those Republicans who a few months ago said they would never support Mr. Trump were, until this latest incident, lining up behind him.
Does Ms. Clinton have what it takes to unite the rest of America behind her? Will all the advantages she goes into this election with be enough to outweigh her candidacy's most glaring marketing defect – the candidate herself?
Tony Keller