Morning Joe panelist Mark Halperin said Monday that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton "is never going to win" a simple up-or-down referendum vote on whether people want her to be president, saying if she were the nominee she would have to rely on "disqualifying" whatever Republican she would face in a general.
Clinton, in spite of leading all Democratic polls, has sagged in favorability among voters, currently standing at 23 points more unfavorable than favorable in Iowa and 20 points underwater in New Hampshire. She lost hypothetical matchups with Republican candidates Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) in Iowa, Colorado, and Virginia according to polling by Quinnipiac.
NBC's Chuck Todd said last week that her faltering numbers fit a pattern over the years: When Clinton is a leading candidate with wide publicity, she does not "wear well."
"In the end, she's never going to win a referendum, up or down, do you want Hillary Clinton to be your next president," Halperin said. "What she's counting on is what Barack Obama counted on, what George Bush counted on for election. Disqualifying whoever the Republicans nominate as an unacceptable choice."
Halperin added that despite the threat of self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Clinton still polled well with Democrats. Sanders has mounted a surprising challenge to Clinton's nomination that many observers thought was inevitable, drawing huge crowds to his campaign rallies with his populist rhetoric.
Host Joe Scarborough said Clinton needed to put the saga of her private email behind her as quickly as possible by putting everything on the table, although co-host Mika Brzezinski pointed out earlier in the segment the fact that she'd already scrubbed the server.
"You look at their poll numbers. You look at her disapproval ratings," Scarborough said. "This cannot sustain itself over the next year."