Article from July 23rd, 2007:

It may be equally important that Clinton's initial support for the Iraq war is not proving a significant impediment to her bid. Clinton has drawn criticism this year for refusing to apologize for her 2002 vote authorizing the use of force, but the poll shows her leading among Democrats who support a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces as well as those who oppose a deadline...

At this early stage, Clinton remains the candidate to beat in the Democratic field.

Overall, 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents support Clinton to be the party's nominee, with Obama second at 30 percent. Edwards, whose hopes for winning depend heavily on a victory in the Iowa caucuses in January, is at 12 percent. Clinton's margin over Obama has been generally steady since February, just after the two candidates launched their presidential bids.

The RealClearPolitics poll tracker average has Clinton at 56 and Sanders at 20 at the moment, with 13 percent going to Biden who may or may not run (and if he did, it remains to be seen if he'd split the anti-Clinton vote with Sanders or the anti-establishment vote with Clinton, or maybe some combination of the two).

One difference between then and now:

Democrats are way behind the pace they set in the 2008 cycle--the last time there was an open Democratic nomination. By this point in the primary calendar, there had already been five debates, the first one in South Carolina in April '07.

Bernie supporters launched a major campaign this week to pressure the DNC to hurry up with the debate schedule, and the article at the third link says that the DNC will now finally announce the schedule and rules later this week.

No one ever thought Bernie would do as well as he already has, so it's already pretty amazing to me. I'm not saying that the debates will be a definite win for Bernie. I am hoping he keeps his crankier impulses in check, and it still remains to be seen if his message will resonate with the larger national audience that the debates will reach. But the timing and number of debates this season does make it feel like the DNC was doing everything possible to smooth the way for Hillary Clinton.

Quick update: To be clear, i don't think the debate schedule is a conspiracy against Bernie or anything like that. I think the DNC's expectation was that Clinton wouldn't have any significant challengers and they therefore wanted to keep the attention off her and on the Republicans. I still don't think that's fair to, say, Martin O'Malley, but i think the idea that a 73 year old Democratic Socialist might have been a serious contender was the furthest thing from their minds.