Jonathan Bernstein has a great 3-part series of posts on this general topic of Clinton, her seeming lock on the Democratic nomination, and the effect on the party:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-03/hillary-clinton-is-in-the-driver-s-seat-isn-t-she-.htmlhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-03/is-hillary-clinton-s-lead-in-polls-for-real-.htmlhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-03/hillary-clinton-and-the-missing-democratic-debate.htmlHe also makes a point I've made here before, which is that it's wrongheaded to think of party nomination battles as purely a contest for voters, as if they're acting as independent agents. Sure, the voters ultimately have to pull the lever for their chosen candidate in the primary. But in a primary contest, you usually have a large number of voters whose allegiance to a particular candidate is paper thin. They're happy to vote for any of several candidates who fall within the party mainstream, and so they're heavily influenced by cues from party elites (which doesn't just mean elected officials, but also journalists, cable news personalities on "their side", etc.), and you can have a big bandwagon effect.
