As it seems to me quite sad that the first women candidate with a chance of winning is so utterly dependent on her husband's histrionics, what if Hillary Clinton runs and wins the nomination in 2004 on her merits?[1]
I can't imagine anyone in the 2004 field actually beating her (actually I can, but she certainly has the edge), but the bigger question is whether or not she can beat Bush?
Certainly she should be able to run a better campaign than Kerry (for one, Shrum won't be around

) but she also has far higher negatives than even Bush in 2004.
So. Both a win or a loss in the general seem quite plausible to me.
If she becomes President, then what?
If she loses to Bush, which Democratic candidates move on to 2008? (Kerry? Dean? Edwards?) Who lines up for 2008?
[1] Full disclosure: If I was American I'd be doing everything I can to get Obama elected, despite being of a more economically conservative bent than the Democratic Party, as I think the political atmosphere in the US desperately needs to go back to the pre-Clinton/Bush era when the other side wasn't "evil", just wrong.