John Hawkins has been scoffing at Hillary's chances in 2008 for a while now and quotes a recent poll as vindication of that view.

By a margin of three to one, Americans say they would "definitely" vote against Hillary Clinton for president, a CNN/Gallup poll released Tuesday has found.

While just 16 percent say they had made up their minds to back Clinton when she seeks the presidency in 2008, 51 percent say there's no way they want to see the former first lady back in the White House.

Men are the most vehement when it comes to the prospect of another Clinton presidency, with 60 percent telling Gallup they would vote against Hillary for sure.

Reporting on the Gallup survey in today's edition, the New York Post notes that women are slightly less repulsed by the notion of Mrs. Clinton running the country, with just 43 percent saying they definitely don't want to see her in the Oval Office.

Even Mrs. Clinton's liberal base isn't solidly behind her, with a full one-third of self described liberals telling Gallup/CNN they have no intention of supporting her in 2008.

Hawkins considers this devastating considering how well known she is at this point.

He may be right, but I can't come down squarely on his side of the argument. I concluded from the 2004 race that the political polarization in this country is so great, that the candidate has virtually no room to create a personal impact. As yourself if John Kerry was a significantly better candidate than Michael Dukakis? No? I don't think so either, yet Kerry by virtue of winning the nomination, had already locked up the vote of a major portion of the country. What was far more important in 2004 was organization and lets recall a startling fact--Karl Rove, the boy genius and architect of the Bush victory, picked up his strategy from the Hillary Clinton New York Senate campaign.

If there are no persuadable voters during the general, the primary becomes the real battlefield and suddenly your poll that suggests that large numbers of Americans would never vote for Hillary is meaningless. Hillary only has to do well among a group where she is in fact quite competitive. Within that microclimate, Hillary has the money and the organization to come out on top and frankly, I don't think it will matter that 2/3rds of the country says she stinks--since when do Democrats know anything about Jesusland? They will assume that their arguments are persuasive and that all they need to do is "get the message out".

They will assume that, but Hillary won't.

I personally don't think any Democrat can win all things being equal, but I think Hillary has a better than average chance of becoming the nominee.