Necessarily? No. But certainly Barack Obama's chances are much better than Hillary's. A new page, a new chapter, virtually a new book. And both likeable and well, yes, brilliant.
And she? Not likeable at all. A friend of mine asked at dinner the other night, "How can someone so despised as she is even aspire to be president?" Moreover, she is not despised for her policies which are both ambiguous and tame, the usual mix. Hillary is despised because she is who she is: quenchlessly greedy, power hungry, sanctimonious and, maybe worst of all, intellectually humdrum. She keeps audiences awake only by shouting.
Anyway, about the Democratic chances. An ex-hawk, now altogether squishy and "progressive," Michael Lind does have a provocative take on "History's hurdle for the Democrats" in Wednesday's Financial Times. He reminds us that the Democrats have won only three presidential contests in the last forty years and with a popular majority just once. That was when Jimmy Carter ran against Gerald Ford who bore the sin of pardoning Richard Nixon. (Imagine what would have happened to our politics if Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon.)
Lind's argument is that the Democrats are still suffering from the march of white working populist men out of the party in 1968.