Yesterday, President Obama said he thinks Hillary Clinton would be a "formidable candidate" if she decides to run for president in 2016, and that if she won, she would make "a great president." He also said he thinks the American people want a president with that "new-car smell" and that "they want to drive something off the lot that doesn't have as much mileage as me." And now everyone is trying to parse what Obama said in Monday-morning blog post land. Was he quietly mocking Hillary Clinton because she's—gasp!—old? The Washington Post even published a blog post with the headline "Hillary Clinton’s ‘new-car smell’ problem." Was this a dig aimed at an old competitor, ally, and potential successor?

Here's the thing: Nope. Obama would have nothing to gain by fueling 2016 speculation right now. He needs to keep the press's fading attention on him for as long as possible. It was just a metaphor that other people are stretching way past the breaking point.

But since we're talking about the primaries, Lisa Lerer at Bloomberg Politics says that Hillary Clinton is polling higher in New Hampshire than any other candidate in polling history. Sixty-two percent of likely Democratic voters say they'll vote for Clinton. Lerer quotes the executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College as saying, “Clinton's numbers are so strong that it seems inconceivable that she could have any serious challenger." Lerer notes that only two names come anywhere near Clinton's poll numbers in New Hampshire: "former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy in 1980 and former Vice President Al Gore in 2000 have broken the 50 percent mark more than six months before the primary." Yes, and both President Ted Kennedy and President Al Gore are so grateful to the people of New Hampshire for their early boost in the polls.

These early polls are not indicative of how the vote is actually going to turn out. They're not presidential polls, they're familiarity polls. You know who else is ahead in New Hampshire? Mitt Romney. He's not as robust as Clinton at 30 percent of likely voters, but he's got a nearly 20-point lead over the number two candidate, Rand Paul. Paul is at 11 percent, just ahead of Chris Christie, who's right ahead of Jeb Bush. I don't believe those numbers accurately represent how New Hampshire's vote will turn out in 2016. All they are is a test of name recognition. A poll asking which candidate literally smelled most like a new car would bring in results that are just as believable.