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Over Labor Day weekend, in between failed fishing excursions and burgers, my friends and I played a popular party game: Guess the likely 2012 presidential field.

We tossed around the usual suspects - Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty - and we agreed that if things don't get considerably better over the next two years, any one of them could give President Obama a run for his money.

But for my friends - three thirtysomething left-of-center moderates who voted for Obama in 2008 - only one name would make them consider pulling the lever for someone else: Hillary Clinton.