Time travel might be a fantasy, but it does occasionally feel like 2016 these days. That is attributable to the sudden ubiquity of Secretary Clinton in the wake of a Supreme Court term that highlighted the consequences of her defeat. It enabled President Trump to appoint three justices to the high court, swinging its balance.

Suddenly Mrs. Clinton seems to be all over the place. A lunch interview with the Financial Times — “jumbo lump crab cake with salad” — an appearance on morning television, and pungent remarks about Justice Clarence Thomas: For a woman who once wandered the woods of Chappaqua in the wake of her presidential election defeat, this amounts to a full-court publicity press.

In a “CBS This Morning” interview with Gayle King, Mrs. Clinton noted that she couldn’t “imagine” running again, to which Ms. King responded, “That’s not a no.” She was firmer in that Financial Times interview, responding that a run was “out of the question,” that she expected President Biden to seek re-election, and that it would be “very disruptive to challenge that.”

Even as she has endeavored to tamp down speculation, Secretary Clinton has displayed little hesitation in weighing in on the affairs of the moment. In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, she told Ms. King that Justice Thomas was “a person of grievance” dating back to their days as classmates at Yale Law School. What a case of pot and kettle calling.

One loyalist who has been beating the HRC drum is political consultant Douglas Schoen, who in January wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “a perfect storm in the Democratic Party is making a once-unfathomable scenario plausible: a political comeback for Hillary Clinton in 2024.” 

Surveying the political landscape, Mr. Schoen concluded: “If Democrats want a fighting chance at winning the presidency in 2024, Mrs. Clinton is likely their best option.” He has given up on Mr. Biden as a valid standard bearer for the next campaign.  

In an article published in the Hill over the weekend, Mr. Schoen indicated that he stands by that winter thesis, writing that “in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade,”  the case for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy is even clearer. Mr. Schoen says that’s because “the country knows her as an experienced politician and a champion of women’s rights” who offers “the exact type of leadership the Democratic Party desperately needs.”  

The appeal of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Schoen reasons, is tied to the truth that “whether or not party leaders will admit it, Democrats know that they need to move on from Biden if they want to stay in the White House in 2024.”

The editor at large of CNN, Chris Cillizza, tweeted out in reference to Mrs. Clinton: “this is her moment.”     

The secretary is not the only one trying to turn back the clock. The New York Times’s stable of Trump-watchers reported that President Trump is mulling imminently announcing an “unusually early bid for the White House,” and that he may do so on social media without warning his staff first.

Eyes are turning toward Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton in part because of unrest in the White House. Reports have emerged of a tetchy president increasingly irritated by questions about his viability in 2024. 

The Times reports that “the president and his top aides have been stung by the questions about his plans, irritated at what they see as a lack of respect from their party and the press, and determined to tamp down suggestions that he’s effectively a lame duck a year and a half into his administration.”

The numbers are to blame for much of this agita. A Yahoo/YouGov poll found that only 40 percent of those who voted for President Biden in 2020 think he should run it back in 2024. RealClear Politics’ polling average shows Vice President Harris politically underwater, with nearly 53 percent of Americans disapproving of her performance.

Musing on her future, Mrs. Clinton told Ms. King that she “can imagine staying as active and outspoken as I can, because I think our country is really on the precipice.”