Are the travails of Commander-in-Chief reflective of the prospects of Hillary Clinton for gaining the presidency?

Both started out wth enormous buzz, with ratings falling precipitously as time has passed.. Privately, people are saying that both "Commander-in-Chief" and Hillary are doomed to cancellation/defeat.

I suppose the comparison is facile, but the premise of a female Commander-in-Chief seemed like a the newest way in which Democrats could get around campaign finance reform limitations. If CiC had in fact fulfilled its early promise, it would have been a weekly campaign ad for the next several years (not including reruns).

Unfortunately, after retooling the shown during hiatus, it garnered its lowest ratings ever--a 2.4 rating/7 share or 8.2 million viewers--less than half of its initial audience. The new time slot put it up against weaker competition, but "Without A Trace" kicked its butt, and it barely edged out the creaking ER.

Any number of reviewers have contemplated the reasons why the show is doing poorly, focusing on the show's rudderless quality. I must confess that I have never caught a single episode of CiC, and that ambivilence may indeed be a clue. I did watch a few episodes of the West Wing, but quickly tired of what was obviously a liberal wet dream. The very premise of CiC made the West Wing look "bipartisan" by comparison. The propaganda quality of CiC struck me as the worst kind of overreach and I suspect my feelings were widely shared.

A premise though, however untimely (or timely, depending on how you look at it), is not the same as a having a show. Once you have a woman as the President, what stories can you tell that would make the show compelling? The West Wing was a glimpse into a community that precious few people have first hand knowledge of, but CiC's only new territory was how it would be different for a woman in the White House. Add to this the problem that a fictional White House actually suffers by comparison with the real White House, where real crises don't need much help from imagination to be compelling and even fantastic.

The real irony is that Hollywood always seems to be a day late and a dollar short on social relevancy. The academy award winning movie was about racism, a topic that may have been controversial 40-50 years ago, but is pretty much a resolved issue at this point. Brokeback Mountain was "cutting edge", but considering that Conservatives shrug their shoulders at Cheney's lesbian daughter and roll their eyes at Democrat fascination over Ken Mehlman or Richard Dreier's alleged sexual preferences, homosexuality doesn't have the shock value they might have hoped for in the early 21st century.

The public considers the prospect of a female president to be well within their imagination, if not an inevitability, and so CiC is left to prosper on its entertainment value, which judging from its performance, is in short supply.