The most common response to my post on why Hillary can be stopped was simply, "this year is not 2004." Clearly there are differences between the two, not the least of which is that the field in '04 didn't have one or two dominant figures like it does this year.

My point, however, was more about voter behavior, and even though Hillary has universal name recognition and is running as a quasi-incumbent, I don't know that that makes the polls right now any more of a valid predictor of the final outcome than they were at this point four years ago, which they weren't at all.

Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are still going to zero in on this race in the final two weeks and start to seriously grapple with their choices, at which point things like this will come into play, along with all the other attributes, both positive and negative, that Hillary brings to the table.

I think most everyone, including yours truly, believes Hillary has been and remains the favorite to win the nomination. But that's a far cry from declaring her victory a foregone conclusion, which is how the media has treated the race the past couple of weeks.There are still too many questions and subtexts churning out there with respect to Mrs. Clinton to come to any definitive answers about how voters will ultimately react.