I hope we will get over being shocked that Hillary is less popular when she’s running for president than when she’s just lost the nomination or when her husband cheated on her. 

Among the most worrying things about Hillary Clinton not facing a serious primary challenge from within her party is that in the almost three decades she’s been in the national eye, a distinct pattern has emerged: Americans love her when she is vulnerable and scrappy and loathe her when she is powerful and coasting. This speaks to some depressing truths about our national tastes in women—they appeal to us most when they are the least threatening—but also to Hillary’s own instincts and behaviors. She is at her worst—too careful, too canned—when she feels she has something to lose, and at her rousing best when she feels she’s got nothing to lose. Recall that she reached the most appealing rhetorical heights of her career in a moment of defeat. From now on, she observed in her concession speech, “it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can the president of the United States.”

It will also be unremarkable, at various points over the next 19 months, to read blaring headlines about her cratering campaign, her dipping numbers. And, yes, those numbers may fall so low that she will lose; they may not. Just don’t be surprised; this too was preordained.