Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s email
habits. They roll with the
attacks on her family’s
foundation, the big checks from
foreign governments, the torpid
response of her not-yet-
campaign.
They have little choice: As Mrs.
Clinton prepares to begin her
second presidential campaign
amid a froth of criticism and
outrage, Democrats are not
just Ready for Hillary — as
supporters named one pro-
Clinton “ super PAC ” — they are
desperate for her.
Congressional Democrats are
counting on a strong Clinton
campaign to help lift them
back into the majority. Party
leaders at all levels want her
fund-raising help and
demographic appeal. And from
the top of the party to its
grass roots, Mrs. Clinton’s
pseudo-incumbency is papering
over significant disadvantages: a
weak bench, a long-term House
minority and a white middle
class defecting to the
Republican Party faster than
the Democrats’ hoped-for
demographic future is expected
to arrive.
Mrs. Clinton, many Democrats
say, is simply too big to fail.
“There is no one else — she’s
the whole plan,” said Sarah
Kovner, a leading Democratic
donor and fund-raiser in New
York. “She is by far the most
experienced and qualified person
we could possibly nominate.
Not even on the horizon but
on the far horizon.”
Her party’s urgent need for her
to succeed explains, in part,
how Democrats have responded
to revelations that Mrs. Clinton
used a private email address
for all of her government
correspondence as secretary of
state and skirted public and
congressional records requests.
But it also suggests the
Democrats’ peril: Should Mrs.
Clinton falter, the party has no
easy way to replace her.
“Anytime you have all your
eggs in one basket, it is a
concern,” said Gov. Jack
Markell of Delaware,
acknowledging the risk
Democrats were running by
deferring to Mrs. Clinton.
“Although if you’re going to
have them all in one, this
basket is a good place to be.”
For two years, Mrs. Clinton
has been the prohibitive favorite
for the Democratic presidential
nomination, keeping the party’s
strongest alternatives on the
sidelines and depriving those
who remain of potential donors
and staff. Senior Democrats
have built a multimillion-dollar
political infrastructure to pave
the way for her candidacy, and
while Republicans openly fretted
about the need for a candidate
of their own who could match
her, Democrats gently tamped
down concerns that the party
was too heavily invested in a
single flag bearer. For House
Democrats, Mrs. Clinton’s
impending candidacy has
figured centrally in pitches to
donors, who are skeptical of
their chances to win the
chamber back.
“There are between 60 and 75
truly competitive districts in the
House,” said Representative
Steve Israel of New York, who
led the House Democrats’
campaign efforts last year and
has told donors that Mrs.
Clinton will need a Democratic
Congress to work with. “Hillary
Clinton is the only Democrat I
know who can go into every
single one of those districts
and do well — with the
possible exception of her
husband.”
Perhaps more significantly, Mrs.
Clinton’s long-looming
candidacy has acted as a
powerful unifying force in the
Democratic Party.
Her broad appeal among
Democratic voters has prevented
liberal complaints against the
party’s Wall Street faction from
mushrooming into an electoral
insurgency. Her star power —
and the potential for a ceiling-
breaking White House victory —
has helped obscure a vexing
reality for the post-Obama
Democratic Party: As much as
it advertises itself as the party
of a rising generation, the
Democrats’ farm team is
severely understaffed, and
many of its leading lights are
eligible for Social Security.
Jerry Brown, perhaps the most
successful big-state Democratic
governor in the country, is 76.
(He ran for president two
decades ago — as the anti-
Clinton candidate.) The top
four congressional Democrats
are all 70 or older. And as
Democrats look for new recruits
to run in 2016, there are fewer
up-and-comers, and more
prospects older than 60 looking
to make up for losses in
previous elections, including Joe
Sestak of Pennsylvania, Russ
Feingold of Wisconsin and Ted
Strickland of Ohio, who are all
eying Senate seats.
“When people bring up the
presidential race to me, they
bring up Secretary Clinton,” said
Jason Kander, 33, Missouri’s
secretary of state and a
Democrat running for the
Senate. “I have just not had
many conversations where
people talk about different
candidates.”
Down the ticket, the party’s
problems are worse. The two
midterm elections since
President Obama’s 2008 victory
have wiped out an entire
generation of Democratic state
officeholders, costing the
Democrats more than 900
state legislative seats and 11
governorships, according to an
internal Democratic National
Committee assessment released
last month.
Republicans have been more
aggressive in steering donors to
less glamorous state races,
electing governors and
legislative majorities whose
sweeping rollback of union
rights has further damaged
Democrats in states in which
they are already reeling.
“The other side has killed us at
that stuff,” said Steve
Rosenthal, a Democratic
strategist.
The shift has provided
Republicans an advantage in
redistricting and fund-raising: In
10 top presidential swing states,
according to data collected by
the National Institute on
Money in State Politics,
Republican state parties raised
$350 million over the last four
years, compared with $215
million for Democratic state
parties.
“Obviously, Florida’s struggled at
the state level for Democrats,”
said Mark S. Pafford, the
Democratic leader in the state’s
House of Representatives, where
Democrats now hold just over
a third of the seats. His hope,
Mr. Pafford said, is that a
candidate of Mrs. Clinton’s
stature “reinvigorates the base
to go out and find motivation
in Democratic leadership.”
Mrs. Clinton’s undisputed fund-
raising prowess has also
overshadowed financial problems
for the national Democratic
Party and liberal groups
supporting it.
The Democratic National
Committee, largely neglected by
Mr. Obama, has steadily raised
less money than its Republican
counterpart over the last two
years. The party chairwoman,
Representative Debbie
Wasserman Schultz of Florida,
is unpopular in the White
House and locked in a vicious
feud with one of the party’s
big donors. And while
conservative outside groups are
on track to raise more than $1
billion during the 2016 cycle,
the main Democratic “ super
PAC ,” Priorities USA Action, is
still struggling to secure more
than a handful of million-dollar
commitments from big donors.
Mrs. Clinton, most Democrats
believe, is the solution. No
other candidate combines her
ties to big donors with her
appeal to small ones. Liberal
activists are hostile to the
party’s second-best big-dollar
fund-raiser, Gov. Andrew M.
Cuomo of New York; business
donors are suspicious of the
party’s other popular small-
donor draw, Senator Elizabeth
Warren of Massachusetts.
Even before Mrs. Clinton’s
recent problems, a few
Democrats had openly fretted
about their party’s dependence
on her. Deval Patrick, a former
Massachusetts governor and an
Obama supporter in 2008, said
he “felt badly” for Mrs. Clinton
and believed that voters would
ultimately care about more
substantive issues than her
BlackBerry use.
But it might be better, Mr.
Patrick suggested, for someone
— anyone — to give Mrs.
Clinton a run for her money.
“My view of the electorate is,
we react badly to inevitability,
because we experience it as
entitlement, and that is risky, it
seems to me, here in America,”
Mr. Patrick said. “I want
Democrats to win.”
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