HILLARY'S DILEMMA – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  We sense a growing disenchantment with Hillary Clinton.  While she still has a lock on the Democratic nomination, the locksmiths are at work, picking that lock.  We rarely quote Maureen Dowd, but she's written some very perceptive things about Hillary, like this, from The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — IT’S hard being Elizabeth Warren.

Especially when you’re not Elizabeth Warren.

Hillary Clinton had an awkward collision last week juggling her past role as President Obama’s secretary of state, her current role as Democratic front-runner and her coveted future role as president.

As secretary of state, she helped Obama push the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is at the center of the current trade fight. In Australia in 2012, she was effusive, saying that the trade pact “sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.”

Now Hillary says she is unsure about the pact and would likely oppose giving President Obama the special authority to negotiate trade deals for an up-or-down vote in Congress. As a future president, of course, she would want the same authority to negotiate trade deals that Obama is seeking in the messy Capitol Hill donnybrook.

But as a candidate pressured by progressives like Warren and Bernie Sanders and by labor unions, she turned to Jell-O, shimmying around an issue she had once owned and offering an unpleasant reminder of why “Clintonian” became a synonym for skirting the truth.

COMMENT:  Ouch!  A "synonym for skirting the truth."  And that is the image of Hillary that people increasingly have in their heads.  You don't know what she believes, if anything.

And you wonder if some new competitor will emerge.  John Kerry anyone?  Now that may be laughable to us, but it may not be laughable to a Democratic Party looking for a better choice.

Or...the Dems could try a genuine draft of their heroine, Elizabeth Warren.  Terrible campaigner, but they love her, despite her own past, for which the word "honesty" does not always apply.

Stay tuned.  The Dem race may not be over.

June 21,  2015