Hillary Clinton Still Has The Nomination If She Wants It

Last week, the folks over at Rasmussen looked at the candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination. This week, the Rasmussen Poll did the same for the Democrats. Their poll was done on January 18th and 19th of a random national sample of 648 likely Democratic voters, and the survey has a margin of error of 4 points.

Like other surveys, this poll shows Hillary Clinton is the prohibitive favorite among Democrats, with 59% of Democrats saying they want her as the nominee. That's 47 points higher that second place finisher Elizabeth Warren (who had 12%). No other candidate finished in double digits.

There are still some of my brothers and sisters on the left who are trying to get Warren to run in the primaries -- even though she has repeatedly said she will not run (and has said she supports Clinton). But as this poll shows, even if Warren was to run, and got the votes of those supporting all other candidates (and the undecideds), she would still have only 41% support -- 18 points below Hillary Clinton.

The only way she could even come close to Clinton is to savagely attack her in the primaries to take some of her supporters away -- something I don't think Warren would be willing to do, even if she could be convinced to run (which I don't believe will happen). And all that would do is weaken the Democratic nominee for the general election, and make it possible for an extremist Republican to have a chance of winning the White House.

In fact, Rasmussen looked at what would happen if only Clinton and Warren were running for the Democratic nomination (see the chart below). Warren's percentage would rise (22%), but so would Clinton's (62%) -- which means if Warren got every single undecided vote, she would still wind up 28 points behind Clinton.

I urge my progressive sisters and brothers to give up this quixotic quest to draft Elizabeth Warren. Take her at her word that she doesn't want to run, and has no intention to do so. Hillary Clinton is our best chance to keep a right-wing extremist out of the White House -- and that is extremely important for the future of this country and its citizens. And Hillary is a liberal -- much more liberal than her husband. Give her a chance -- and once she is elected, we can join together and put pressure on her to uphold progressive values and put progressive policies in place.