Why obsess over baseball playoffs when you can make speculation a year-round sport by assessing Hillary's presidential prospects? Today's WNBC/Marist poll offers the usual Heisenbergian weirdness surrounding Her Hillness. She's exactly where she needs to be and nowhere at all. The new poll puts her at 35 percent among Democrats, beating Al Gore who has 16 percent and isn't running. Former Virginia governor Mark Warner, the conservative southern rich guy some feel can challenge Hillary, is in a 2 percent dead heat with Tom Daschle; Bill Richardson, Wes Clark, and every other living Democrat who isn't James Traficant are polling at 1 percent.

You don't have to be a statistician to get the sense that Democrats are more resigned to Hillary's nomination than hopeful for it. Just over half (51 percent) of voters nationwide would rather she didn't run and only about a quarter think she can win, which conforms to a recent poll of New York voters. So we have an assumed nominee with no expectation of victory. Should Democrats start pricing Spitzer 2012 bumper stickers?

"National Poll: Campaign 2008" [WNBC/Marist]
"CBS Poll on Hillary Clinton" [WBEN]