Beyond Hillary.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: COMMENT - Hillary Clinton's campaigns

It is dispiriting, to say the least, to confront the prospect of a single, "inevitable" Democratic candidate for President.

Already, with more than a year and a half to go before Election Day, the entire political establishment seems to have given up on the prospect of a real challenge to Hillary Clinton.

As one disaffected Democratic activist told me--anonymously, for fear of alienating Hillary's backers--there is something seriously wrong with a party that sees challenging its sixty-seven-year-old front runner as treason.

Contrast that with the Republican party and its deep bench of young contenders--all jockeying to pass muster with a loud and influential activist base.

Hillary is the Democrats' Bob Dole. She is the elder stateswoman who deserves to run unopposed because it's "her turn." That's a recipe for political death.

The don't-dare-cross-Hillary movement found expression, in late March, in a scolding e-mail to newsrooms around the nation from John West, a founder of the HRC Super Volunteers Facebook page.

West, who runs a landscaping business in Chicago and organized Hillary-for-President volunteers in 2008, warned reporters not to use any of a long list of "sexist" words to describe the candidate, including "polarizing," "secretive," "calculating," "disingenuous," "insincere," "ambitious," "inevitable," "entitled," and "overconfident."

"You are on notice that we will be watching, reading, listening and protesting coded sexism this time around," West wrote in the e-mail. "We expect you to exercise restraint and take editorial responsibility."

This effort to tell journalists what they can and cannot write had the predictable result: an Internet firestorm that ultimately reinforced the candidate's image as "polarizing" and "entitled."

There is plenty of sexism in media analysis of Hillary and other female candidates. But trying to deal with it by executive order was disastrous.

So much for West's attempt to strike a blow for Hillary, let alone for all women.

As Abby Scher pointed out a year ago in this magazine ("Not Ready for Hillary," March 2014), Clinton is suffering from a major enthusiasm deficit among young feminists all over the country, who overwhelmingly prefer Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

That doesn't bode well for the "inevitable" 2016 general election campaign.

While Hillary's die-hard supporters are trying to squash criticism, progressive activists and labor are trying to use the gentle art of persuasion to...