The permanent campaign rolls on to 2016

As if she were the candidate herself, Hillary Clinton swept on to the stage last of all at Transylvania University in Kentucky, just late enough to keep the anxious 1,200-strong crowd on their toes.

Although not on the ballot, Mrs Clinton has had a schedule as busy as any candidate in the congressional elections, as have a brace of Republicans, all laying down markers for potential runs at the presidency in 2016.

The Saturday speech for the state's Democratic Senate candidate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, was followed by Sunday appearances for the party in New Hampshire, a frenetic schedule more than matched elsewhere in the country by her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president.

Two years before the 2016 poll, the scaffolding to support Mrs Clinton's presidential run is already substantially built, and in recent weeks, she has given the organisation its first serious test.

"This has been like spring training for them, or going to New Haven before you take a show to Broadway - you see what works and what doesn't," said Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

More than most, the Clintons are hardened to the realities of the permanent campaign required of anyone running for public office in the US.

But that does not mean they do not make mistakes. Mrs Clinton has already shown signs of wobbling as she veers to the left on some issues in readiness for a fight for the Democratic nomination.

Two challengers loom for Mrs Clinton, although neither has yet declared their hand, both from the party's left or progressive wing: Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland, and Elizabeth Warren, the first-term Massachusetts senator.

At a rally in Boston last week, Mrs Clinton almost seemed to be channelling Mrs Warren's attacks on big business when she said: "Don't let anybody tell you that it's corporations and businesses that create jobs."

Mrs Clinton later said she had been using "shorthand" and was referring to corporate tax breaks.

Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign manager, said any challengers to Mrs Clinton could keep the nomination battle going well into 2016 even without being a serious threat to her.

The deregulated campaign finance rules and the advent of super-political action committees, or super-Pacs, helped fund Republican challengers to Mr Romney in 2012, long after they had any hope of winning the party's nomination.

"I think you are going to have a highly contested Democratic primary and all the challengers will have super-Pacs," Mr Stevens said.

Potential Republican aspirants for the White House, including senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Tex Cruz of Texas, past governor of Flordia Jeb Bush and present governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, have also used the midterms to get on the campaign trail.

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Mr Cruz's ambition is already stirring up trouble in the likelihood that the Republicans win the Senate majority.

Mr Cruz told the Washington Post that a Republican Senate's first priority should be "looking at the abuse of power, the executive abuse, the regulatory abuse, the lawlessness that sadly has pervaded this administration."

Mr Cruz also reiterated his demand that Congress repeal the administration's health law, or Obamacare, a demand that led to a government shutdown in late 2013.

Mitch McConnell, who would be the incoming Senate majority leader, has made it clear that launching political investigations will not be his priority. Nor does he expect Obamacare can be repealed.

"With the president in the position that he's in, I can't imagine he would sign a full repeal, but there's various parts of it that are very unpopular and we will be voting on them," Mr McConnell said on Monday in Kentucky.

Mr McConnell brushed off Mr Cruz's refusal to support him publicly as majority leader but party strategists expect the Republican caucus in both the House and the Senate to be fractious.

<>"That is certainly going to be an issue," said Sara Fagen, former White House director of political affairs under George W Bush. "Senator [Ted] Cruz certainly hasn't been shy about disagreements with Senate leadership in the past. I suspect that will only intensify if he runs for president."

Republicans will also be trying to calibrate whether the Clintons' extensive campaigning for Democratic candidates has helped at all. "They are supposed to be building this great organisation," said Mr Stevens, "but to what effect?"

Among campaign professionals, the most closely watched barometer for the midterms, and what they say about the 2016 presidential campaign, will be voter turnout.

Democrats, who typically struggle to get their supporters to the polls in the midterms in the same numbers that vote in presidential elections, have invested heavily in their ground game.

"In 2010, lots of Democrats stayed home," said Lynn Vavreck, of the University of California, Los Angeles. "If Democrats learned from that, they will bring out more of the Obama electorate than they did in 2010."

Additional reporting by Barney Jopson

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