The OP assumes Hillary will be the nominee. Plenty of Democratic voters have expressed a desire for an alternative to her in the primary. Looks like they get what they want:
DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz: Hillary Will Get Primary Challenger
Any boxer training for a big fight needs a sparring partner, someone who can sharpen him up while not causing actual injury, and who is really on the same team. Odd for W-S to admit they’re going to have to recruit one, though.
Here’s a major Republican site that concedes it doesn’t look good for their side:
I’m unconvinced. All the talk about how American voters have rarely chosen to vote for the same party three times in a row ignores, first of all, that Republicans have won the popular vote only once in the past six elections, and that was with a wartime incumbent. This is during the same time that the electorate has gotten less and less white. Again: if the electorate in 1988 was as brown as it will be in 2016, and Bush got the same percentage of white and nonwhite votes as he did then, Mike Dukakis would have been our 41st president.
I did enjoy reading the article linked there that it was responding to, though, which included the following facts which establish what a disadvantage the GOP starts at, having to play whack-a-mole all over the map to have any chance at all:
So at the starting gun, it’s 242-102 (anyone who thinks a state that hasn’t gone Republican since the '80s is in play for the GOP, I want a hit of what they are smoking). Out of the remaining 194 electoral votes, Republicans need at least 167 to force a tie and throw it to the House; and that despite the electorate getting, as I keep saying, less and less white.
More juicy goodness from that piece:
But it gets even worse for the GOP just around the bend. Another line from that article: “The biggest consistent GOP state in this period has been Texas, with 38 electoral votes.” Thus if Texas were to become a blue state, there would be no swing states at all–Democrats would start with 280. And that’s exactly what is on the horizon. Not for Hillary, and likely not for her successor. But after that, it looks like a possibility and then a probability (and even the interim period, when the GOP candidate has to spend money to defend Texas, makes “whack-a-mole” all the harder). Ted Cruz, who whatever else you think of him is a smart guy, sees that writing on the wall:
Texas is already a majority-minority state, the only one that is not already Democratic. By 2020, Hispanics alone will outnumber non-Hispanic whites, never mind other minorities. And by the 2030s, whites in Texas will be outnumbered by nonwhites by more than two to one. Maybe the GOP will be different by then, more competitive with minorities; but it sure doesn’t look to be on that trajectory right now. Hard for me to imagine the nativist wing is just going to fold up their tents quickly enough for the party to make that shift, as much as Karl Rove would dearly wish they would.
And Texas might go blue even sooner, if the Joel Pollak at Breitbart.com is right:
It is really nice to see blue states that have a surfeit of Democratic voters sharing them so nicely with states that need them more. 
This will be helpful in the Senate as well. That pesky House will continue to be a problem, though.
Texas is nowhere near going blue. Those hopes are based on demographic projections, which in Texas’ case are meaningless because everyone in Texas whites and Latinos are more Republican than their demographics elsewhere.
Why people think a state Romney won by 16 points is going blue anytime soon is beyond me. “Because demographics” is not an argument. Texas is proof that culture trumps demographics.
Keep whistling past that graveyard. I’m sure North Carolina Republicans were shocked when their state–another that is rapidly becoming less white, while the white population adds educated, liberal “Starbucks voters” at a brisk clip–went for Obama in 2008, after Kerry lost by 13 points in '04.
Which was quickly reversed so that now North Carolina has a red governor, red legislature, red Senators, a red House delegation, and voted for Romney.
And again, even the demographic projections are based on minorities turning out at the same levels they did when voting for Obama. There is no guarantee that this will happen again, and in fact it didn’t happen in all the elections Obama presided over in which he wasn’t on the ballot.
The hypothesis that this is a “midterm problem” is the real whistling past the graveyard. It’s not a midterm problem. It’s a “need inspiring candidates” phenomenon.
No, it’s a midterm problem and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Which means that for that foreseeable future, the best case for Democrats will be to try to keep repeating the Obama pattern: get a Democratic Congress for the first two years of a Democratic administration, get a bunch of stuff done, then just veto all attempts to repeal those gains, rinse, repeat.
I’m fairly pessimistic about being able to do this in the House next year (though the Senate looks better, at least to get to the 50 votes needed to pass stuff via reconciliation or perhaps the “nuclear option”). But maybe with Hillary’s successor, we could get another two years. It will probably be decades if ever before we get more than just those two years, but with all the judges our side will get to appoint in the meantime (likely four Supreme Court justices alone before the end of Hillary’s second term!), not to mention all the executive orders and administrative positions, I’m pretty sanguine. 
There is no evidence that it is either a midterm problem or an non-Obama problem. We won’t know until this election. If Clinton can recreate the Obama coalition, then sure, the Republicans are going to have a very difficult time. When they do win, it will be very narrow margins in the EC as in 2004.
But if she can’t accomplish that, then this could very well be the biggest GOP win since 1988.
You sound like those “skewed polls” folks from last time. You’re talking about rolling up a big 1988-style win, but those don’t happen for the GOP any more. There was no “Obama coalition” in 2004, but Kerry came within a few thousand votes in Ohio of the presidency. Rerun that election with the demographics of today, and Kerry wins easily. And that was the GOP presidential high water mark of the past quarter century! And again, even '88 goes Dukakis’s way if he has the demographics of today.
Calculate what happens if everyone vote in 2016 the way they voted in 2014, but with 2012 turnout levels.
Sorry, but wasn’t that one of the key arguments behind the skewed polls arguments? (No addressing merits here, just the irony. ;))
Yes it was. But the polls were actually skewed against Republicans in the midterms, so it’s never been an absurd argument.
You guys pwn the midterms. No dispute. But that’s weak tea compared to running strong in presidential cycles. I wish we could get our voters out every two years, but I’d much rather be in our shoes than yours.
Newsmax is not my preferred cite, but there isn’t anything there other than the usual suspects:
Ouch.
For me, Joe Biden has the most name recognition, followed closely by Bernie Sanders. I worry about the age of both of these guys. If anyone starts to fret about Hillary’s age, bring up Sanders and Biden, maybe that’s what they’re there for.
I think both of these guys are serious contenders should they choose to run. Right now it is Hillary v. Clown Car. Biden and Sanders can both go toe to toe with Hillary on the experience issue, and really, if you do the math, come out on top. Maybe one of them could make a more exciting case for the Presidency than Hillary, maybe not. Hillary isn’t an experience wimp herself. But, ha ha, she isn’t the only one with experience being in the White House for 8 years by 2016.
I’d have to get to know the other guys to even have an opinion.
I suppose after the election, we’ll have new excuses: “Hillary was a special case, the first woman president. Plus, the Republican nominee was not conservative enough.” Then in 2024, it will be “Joaquin Castro won because he was the first Hispanic nominee, and the Republican was not conservative enough. We’ll get 'em in 2032!” 
He very much was one.
I prefer where we are than where you are, so hey, we’re all happy.
The midterms are where Congressional control matter most and where state control is mostly decided. The presidency is an important office to be sure, but not more important than all the others combined. And by coming out only in general elections, you pretty much cede control of everything but the Presidency.
I realize that you CAN in the Senate in a general election, but the extremely poor performance of Democrats in the last one made that job much harder than it should have been. Winning four seats will be a challenge. And even then the House will remain under GOP control and the Senate will likely revert to GOP control in 2018, when the Democrats have a brutal Senate map to contend with.
I’m a little puzzled why the focus of such discussions is Texas, sweet as it would be to get LBJ’s state back in progressive hands. You could substitute Florida and get the same result - the Presidency being unavailable to the Republicans as they are currently constituted. But for Florida, the horizon is much closer, and perhaps already here.
Obama’s wins there were narrow, sure, but they were wins, unlike Texas. The state’s demographic composition has been increasingly made of northerners, who transplant their views as well as their bodies, and Hispanics, while God/guns/gays whites have arguably already lost their grip, holding onto what they can only via gerrymandering.