Why Is Hillary Clinton Struggling to Lead in the Polls?

The great surprise of this election cycle is the trouble that Hillary Clinton has had in clinching the nomination. I realize that the primaries are still far away but I assumed that by now she would dominate the polls and have an easy ride to Iowa and New Hampshire ahead of her.

As if the continued neck-and-neck business with Bernie Sanders was not enough to mystify me, Joe Biden is inexplicably pondering entry into the race and being received favorably by many Democrats. At least with the republicans, I understand why their nomination process is a mess, The Dems have completely mystified me this year. I thought this was a done deal.

How Can Bernie Sanders Have Any Appeal Today?

Bernie Sanders is running for the Democratic nomination but he is technically an independent. In fact, he describes himself as a socialist but is not apparently a member of the Socialist Party USA (which is a sad little affair with something like one or two thousand members).

Now, the last unabashed socialist to run for president several decades ago got a few thousand total popular votes nationwide. Simply put, it has always been impossible for open socialists to win elections in this country. Even the most liberal locales have been allergic to this form of left-wing politics. Certainly, democrats have been justifiably accused of adhering to specific socialist ideas but their politics have always been to the right of major European socialist parties. In fact, liberal democrats in America are often more right wing than some conservative parties in Europe but that is a topic for another time.

So how has Sanders stayed competitive this time around? He is polling only around 20-30 percent support in head-to-head polls against the other democrats but that is far more than any of the others running against Hillary Clinton. Names like Webb and O'Malley get anywhere from 0% to 2% in such polls. I suspect he gets support for a few reasons:

• He is from Vermont and is popular with New Englanders. His higher numbers in New Hampshire (there he nearly equals Clinton with 40% of the vote) are probably due to this factor and they help to give him credibility in other polled locales. 
• People are really fed up with the way that global capitalism has destroyed their hopes. In a related article on my finance blog, I discussed how the economics of this country have been betraying the working class for decades. Maybe they are ready for extreme solutions to their extreme problems. I tend to think that Donald Trump is getting a lot of support on the other end of the political spectrum for the same reasons.
• Perhaps people just don't like Hillary Clinton enough to dismiss her competition so quickly.

Is Hillary Her Own Worst Enemy?

Maybe the explanation is much more simple than I let on. When I saw how even the mention of a run by Joe Biden was enough to upset Clinton's already rocking boat, I was surprised at how easily disturbed the race was on the Democratic side, Perhaps democrats are more fed up with Clinton than it appears.

It could be that the email scandal and Benghazi do resonate with liberal voters. Or maybe people are just sick of the Clintons and want to move on. Of course, it could also be a more prosaic answer. People might just not be impressed with the content of her political proposals. Wouldn't that be pleasantly traditional?