Howard Kurtz at Washington Post: ‘Hillary Clinton is Inevitable’

We are more than seventeen months away from the 2008 elections, and the Washington Post actually published an article Tuesday by Howard Kurtz that began with the following sentence (emphasis added throughout, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Hillary Clinton is inevitable.

Nice way to begin an article about a presidential race months before the first primary, dontcha think? Kind of like saying that the Yankees are inevitable before spring training starts.

Granted, the inevitability dealt with Clinton winning the Democrat nomination. However, as that is not apparent until one reads the body of the article, and as many readers only peruse titles and ledes, this point is almost irrelevant given the second paragraph:

That, at least, is the consensus view of media wizards, strategists, pollsters and other kibitzers, that HRC is a virtual lock for the nomination. An official with a rival campaign told me that Hillary has an 80 percent chance of being the party's candidate, and most neutral observers would probably go with a higher number.

What is it about liberals always wanting to throw the “consensus” term around? In fact, isn’t Kurtz somewhat advocating the inevitability by using phrases like “consensus” and “80 percent chance?”

Furthermore, though Kurtz ended up quoting a number of journalists concerning problems that Hillary has with feminists inside her Party, her wishy-washy position on the war, and her unlikeability, nowhere did Kurtz share specific polling data addressing how she does against Republican candidates in the general election.

Instead, Kurtz danced around the subject with this quote from a Los Angeles Times article:

By a wide margin, several polls show, voters want a Democrat to win -- yet when offered head-to-head contests of leading announced candidates, many switch allegiance to the Republican.

Yet, Kurtz chose not to share actual data concerning this issue. For instance, Real Clear Politics is currently showing Rudy Giuliani with a lead of 2.3 percent over Clinton in an average of all the recent polls out there. And John McCain, who has been plummeting lately, is remarkably still ahead of Hillary by 0.8 percent.

Conceivably more concerning for Clinton is that RCP has her up by only 5.5 percent over Fred Thompson, and he hasn’t even entered the race yet.

As such, Howard, could you make that opening sentence read “Hillary Clinton is the inevitable Democrat presidential nominee,” as that’s the only thing that appears close to inevitable looking at this race 17 months out.