My latest at The Daily Beast: Hillary Clinton - Our Modern-Day Lady Macbeth

With Donald Trump’s campaign continuing to careen into incoherence, it’s becoming increasingly clear that barring some unforeseen circumstance (or low non-white voter turnout) Hillary Clinton will likely win the presidency. However, she will never win the peace. Hillary seems destined, if she wins, to be a president without popular devotion or even a public honeymoon. And she will likely spend four, or eight, years at constant war with a hostile press.

Why the relationship between Mrs. Clinton and the media is so fraught is a complicated tale. Journalist Jonathan Allen last year tackled the miserable web of mutual distrust and distaste that has defined the “rules” by which the press has covered the Clintons for more than a quarter-century.

The fact that many journalists approach the Clintons—especially Hillary Clinton—with a presumption that she has done something that if it’s not outright corrupt is at least worthy of looking into, inevitably colors the way the public views the former secretary of state, and the way they respond to her in the polls.Read the rest here.

And check out all of my Daily Beast columns here.

Democrats, 2016 and the fight over Obama's legacy

My latest piece, for The New York Times online:In fundamental ways, the 2016 Democratic primary has been a litigation of the Obama years, and of whether the president’s 2008 campaign vow of “change we can believe in” succeeded or failed.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/opinion/campaign-stops/clinton-sanders-and-the-fight-over-obamas-legacy.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Warning signs for Hillary in South Carolina

Even before Sen. Bernie Sanders began surging in early state and national polls, the Hillary Clinton campaign viewed South Carolina as her firewall, mainly due to her much higher standing and name recognition with black voters. But there are signs that the Clinton team may be falling behind the Sanders campaign, both in terms of organizing on the ground and exciting black voters, even as former Secretary Clinton maintains a large lead in the polls and prognosticators like FiveThirtyEight.com give her overwhelming odds of winning the state’s primary in two weeks.Read more here.