I have polled Hillary Clinton’s national favorability for the past twenty-five years and I have never seen it drop to its current level of 40% in the Quinnipiac Poll and 37% in the latest NBC.WSj poll.  Not ever.

She is in free fall. Voter don’t like her or trust her and they’re abandoning her in droves. Every major poll shows hemorrhaging of a degree that is rarely seen in such a short time span. She is in serious jeopardy.

Her recent crash – to 40% favorable, 51% unfavorable in the July 30 Quinnipiac Poll- means that she has lost a net of 16 points of favorability in Quinnipiac polls since last November April and 9 points in the past month.

Obviously, her ridiculous explanations for having a private email server and the allegations of her sending classified material on that system is hurting her. The serious questions about speaking fees to the Clintons and the donations to the Clinton Foundation are taking a huge toll.

Here is the record of her decent:

Date
Fav. / Unfav.
Nov, 2014
50-45
Mar, 2015
48-45
Apr, 2015
46-47
May, 2015
45-47
July 30, 2015
40-51
Source: Quinnipiac Poll

A stunning collapse!  In the process, she has fallen into a statistical tie with Walker and Bush.  And her base among women is not holding firm.  In the latest poll, women only give her a favorable rating by 47-43.

And, according to the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, she has lost ten points in the past month in her support among White Women. Only 34% of that group sees her favorably.

By a wide majority, voters son’t trust her. As an indicator of likely further fall, only 37% of all voters find her “honest and trustworthy” while 57% do not.  Even among women she is not trusted. While only 43% of women surveyed trust her, 51% do not.

It’s hard to recall any recent example of such free fall in a candidate, particularly one who has been in the public eye for so long, is married to a still very popular former president, and served as Secretary of State leaving office with high positive ratings.

For Hillary, the worst is yet to come.  The textbook teaches that the way to get over a political scandal is to end it by getting all the facts out, however negative, and then to move to the recovery phase.  The metaphor of fighting a forest fire is apt.  During the fire, one cannot extinguish the flames.  They are too intense.  So you need to set your own fire, burning the fuel in its path so that the big fire dies out.

But Hillary’s scandal has no end in sight.  Her insane, self-destructive policy of concealment and paranoid secrecy has led to a prolongation of the drip-drip-drip of scandal revelations throughout the balance of this year and even into the election year itself.

At the end of each month, new e mails will be released by the State Department until they are all public by the end of the year.  The Benghazi hearings lie ahead of her in October.  And, as the e mails emerge from hiding, we will see many, many more examples of her flouting the law by sending or receiving classified material on her private, insecure server.  The repercussions of these illegal communications are sure to reverberate for many months into 2016.

Are the Democrats really going to commit suicide by nominating Hillary?  Will they all line up to drink the Kool-Aid?  

My guess is that President Obama and Valerie Jarrett won’t let them.  As Bernie Sanders gains momentum, the possibility of Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren entering the race grows.  If Hillary’s crash in favorability continues and she falls below the 40% firewall Obama has been able to maintain throughout his term, a real Democratic alternative becomes inevitable.

If one does not emerge and Hillary continues her fall, there is a real chance that even Sanders could defeat her for the nomination.