For Republicans, a Hillary Clinton candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 is both the best and worst thing that could happen to the party.
While she brings more baggage to the race than any potential first-term Democratic candidate in modern history, she also checks off the box with her candidacy of being the first woman in United States history to have a serious shot at the office.
To be sure, Clinton will be able to count on some votes because she is the first viable female candidate. But Americans may not want to simply check off another box. They did that when Barack Obama became the first black candidate to have a serious shot at the presidency in 2008 and have reaped the whirlwind for that choice.
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Yet, Republicans will have to walk a fine line, as they did in 2008 and have done since, about criticizing someone whose candidacy checks a demographic box. For the past seven years, from some corners, any criticism of candidate Obama and then President Obama has brought charges of racism.
The same will be true of Clinton. Any charges leveled against her will bring, from some corners, charges of sexism, of statements that "the same would never be said of a man."
Republican candidates should count on that and be prepared to defend their words before the criticism is ever leveled.
Fortunately, Clinton's baggage is so heavy, there will be a lot to level.
Her most recent scandals have occurred since she left only the second public office she ever held -- secretary of state.
Earlier this year, it became public knowledge that she did not use a secure computer server while she headed the Department of State and that her office -- perhaps illegally -- deleted tens of thousands of emails written during her tenure there.
Just before that, the Clinton Foundation that she, her husband and their daughter head was revealed to have accepted -- inappropriately if not illegally -- millions of dollars from foreign countries during her tenure as secretary of state.
Either miscue would have removed most candidates from consideration, but many low-information voters sadly see her owed the nomination because she as first lady was wronged by her husband's sexual indiscretions while in the White House or because she was a favorite for the nomination in 2008 but was caught and surpassed by the hope-and-change-spouting Obama.
It's her turn, they believe, which is a truly terrible reason to vote for someone for the top job in the free world.
Even without the more recent scandals, Clinton's tenure as secretary of state during Obama's first term provides plenty of reason her candidacy should be a non-starter.
In recent months, the best supporters could say about her time in the office is that she traveled a lot. It's what happened when she traveled, though, that was the problem.
U.S.-Russia relations, which at one point Clinton was said to have "reset," are at their lowest point since Russia was a part of the Soviet Union.
Relations with Israel, the strongest U.S. ally in the Middle East, are at their lowest point since the Jewish state became a country in 1948.
The overall situation in the Middle East is one of turmoil, much of it -- such as the rise of the Islamic State -- born while Clinton served as secretary of state.
She'll also continue to be dogged in the region from the 2012 terrorist attack at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans died. Though it knew better, the Obama administration initially blamed the attack on response to an anti-Islam video. And she later callously responded, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" before a Senate hearing on how and why the four died.
Republicans will have much more from which they can dish, from her blank slate after eight years in the U.S. Senate to her poor-mouthing about being broke when she and her husband left the White House, and from her cozy relationship with Wall Street (not favored by the growing extremist left wing of her party) to the myriad of kerfuffles of which she was a party during her husband's administration.
Clinton, at this point a virtual lock for her party's nomination, nevertheless has to convince Middle America she's one of them if she wants the keys to the White House. Middle America wasn't buying in 2008, and now she has the albatross of the Obama administration tied around her neck. Her fate likely will be determined by whether the Republicans decide to wear an albatross of their own.