For Hillary, History Is Repeating Itself

This presidential candidate draws raucous, overflowing crowds.  He has experienced a meteoric rise in the polls.  His positions on issues often confound the media.  His hair has been fodder for late night comedians. No, his name is not Donald Trump.  The candidate is 74-year old Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont senator who dons rumpled suits and sports an untamed gray mane has turned the Democratic Presidential race into a tight contest that the political pundits never saw coming.  His climb to within striking distance of Hillary Clinton has thrown her campaign into crisis mode.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.  The former First Lady was primed to coast to a coronation. Her advisers, including former President Bill Clinton, seriously miscalculated that her advantages of money and name recognition would be a firewall to thwart Sanders' campaign.

Down by 50 points in the polls last year at one time, Sanders has trimmed Clinton's national lead to seven points in the latest CBS/New York Times poll.  A Fox News survey has her ahead by 15. Sanders is poised to win the first two primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire.

In addition, Sanders has hooked large, boisterous crowds to his campaign rallies.  He drew 27,800 people in Los Angeles.  That is five times larger than any crowd that has shown up at one of Hillary's orchestrated assemblies.  In recent weeks, Sanders' revivals have pulled in about 100,000 supporters.

Sanders whips up crowds by attacking the rich, the powerful, income inequality and the rigged capitalistic economy.  His positions are left of most Democrats and are born of his self-avowed admiration for socialism.  He eschews personal attacks on Clinton, preferring to stick to the issues.

While Clinton still enjoys a huge lead in fund-raising, Sanders has been narrowing the gap.  He announced in December a record 2.2 million individual donations, topping Mr. Obama's total for a single year.  In the most recent quarter, Sanders raised $26 million, just shy of Clinton's $28 million.

This must seem all too familiar to the Clinton campaign after an unknown senator from Illinois handed her a humiliating defeat in the 2008 race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. In that election, Clinton seemed all but assured to win because of her elephantine edge.

It's no coincidence that the apparatchik media has focused on the anti-establishment GOP wave, while ignoring Democrats' revolt against its old guard.  But it is impossible to dismiss the angst among the establishment who cringe at the prospect of outsider Sanders as the nominee.

He isn't even a Democrat.  He officially was elected Senator as an independent in Vermont, although he caucuses with Democrats. He is anathema to Democrat bosses who value party fealty above all else. The party has tried every trick to tilt the primary to Clinton at Sanders' expense.

But it isn't working.

An average of the latest RealClearPolitics polls are sour news for Clinton.  Against the top three Republican contenders, she leads only Donald Trump by a razor-thin margin, losing to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.   Sanders tops both Cruz and Trump, but lags a few points behind Rubio.

Democrats, like many of their Republican counterparts, are fed up with the establishment. Recent polling shows a full 18 percent of Democrats would not vote for Clinton under any circumstances. Clinton represents the status quo and most of Sanders' voters would not back her.

This has the Democratic Party bosses nervous.  Not only is Clinton slipping and sliding in the polls, but there is an FBI investigation of her email scandal hanging like a ominous cloud over her head. What if she is indicted just as Democratic Party convention convenes?

A worried Clinton has met privately with the president on two occasions in recent months.  One theory is that she is lobbying Mr. Obama to quash the FBI investigation.  That may explain why Clinton now describes her candidacy as a bid for a third term for the president.

Despite her pandering, Mr. Obama has not favored Clinton with his endorsement.  Speculation is rampant that the president may know the former New York senator can avoid criminal charges only by accepting a plea deal of a misdemeanor offense for her email shenanigans.

Clinton lost once when all the odds appeared in her favor.  It could happen a second time, which would effectively end her political career. Conventional wisdom still clings to the notion she will overcome the Sanders threat.  But conventional wisdom usually turns out to be wrong.