Volatile campaign cycle

Democratic campaign strategist David Sirota thinks she has undercut her credibility on the war “because she has projected a policy calculation on it.”

“She has tried to thread an unthreadable needle by first saying ‘I voted for the war, but now I’m critical of the war,’ [and] ‘I’m not going to say it’s a mistake but I’m not going to vote for a blank check.’ There’s no ideology there. It does not seem like a policy that is governed by principle,” Mr. Sirota told me.

But Hillary Clinton’s transparent political calculations on the war, which Mr. Edwards attacked at the Democratic debate in New Hampshire, is not her only problem.

There is also her growing liability as a deeply polarizing figure.

That’s one of the key points election analyst Charlie Cook raised about her at a briefing last Saturday at the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Mackinac Policy Conference.

Between 46 percent and 48 percent of Americans “won’t vote for her no matter what. If she were a stock, she’d have a very narrow trading range. There’s no room for error,” Mr. Cook told the assembled businessmen.

That’s not a good place for the Democratic front-runner to be, especially in an election cycle where the odds of the Republicans holding the White House are problematic at best. Historically, since World War II, it is rare for a party to win a third term.

But we’re in a very volatile campaign cycle where all the old precedents could be broken. The top Republican presidential contenders are showing surprising strength against the Democratic front-runners at a time when all the data says it should be otherwise.

At a time when the Democrats are having trouble demonstrating they can govern, and their front-runner remains deeply unpopular, no one should count the Republicans out.

Donald Lambro, chief political correspondent of The Washington Times, is a nationally syndicated columnist.