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Hillary Clinton at Wednesday evening's Democratic debate in Miami.

(Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Hillary Clinton is the most capable, experienced and knowledgeable Democratic candidate for president.

The former First Lady, secretary of state and New York senator has been in the political trenches virtually her whole life. She knows the issues. She understands the art of the deal. She's credible and she's impressive.

She not only can win the White House, but she also will be ready once she gets there, a description that does not apply to her worthy but ideologically narrow primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Sanders is so far out of the mainstream, and so ideologically rigid, that he's unlikely to find traction for his ideas even were he to be elected -- leaving him, and the nation, adrift. Given Sanders' self-identification as a democratic socialist, he is also likely to be a far more polarizing figure in the White House.

By contrast, Clinton knows Washington, knows how to get things done, and will get things done.

Yes, she carries significant negatives, partly because her partisan opponents have spent decades trying to tarnish her reputation. Even so, she stands in full command of the knotty issues, both domestic and foreign, that confront America today.

For all those reasons and more, Ohio Democrats should vote for Hillary Clinton next Tuesday.

Clinton, 68, is well-prepared to be president. She was twice elected a senator from New York. She was secretary of state from 2009 through 2012. As Bill Clinton's wife, Hillary Clinton gained encyclopedic knowledge of the presidency, its power and its limitations. Her time in Congress tutored her in the kind of pragmatic bargaining that can get things done in Washington. In recent years, that skill has been in short supply at the Capitol.

Sanders, 74, has been in Congress since 1991, either as a representative or senator. Earlier, he was mayor of Vermont's largest city, Burlington (population: 42,211).

Sanders inspires passion among some Democrats. His prescriptions for what ails America can have curb appeal. But many are impractical and most would be dead on arrival in Congress. Moreover, a Sanders presidency could further polarize American politics, the last thing the country needs.

Clinton is well-known to Ohioans. In 2008, vying with Barack Obama for that year's Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton drew 54 percent of Ohio Democrats' votes to Obama's 44 percent (2 percent were cast for John Edwards).

Obama carried only five Ohio counties in that 2008 primary. A substantial number of black Democrats live in four of them, including Cuyahoga County. In that connection, it's notable that this year, such prominent black Ohio Democrats as U.S. Reps. Marcia Fudge of Warrensville Heights and Joyce Beatty of Columbus are foursquare behind Clinton, as indeed is the Congressional Black Caucus's Political Action Committee.

Clinton also is bidding to become the first woman nominated for the presidency by a major political party. That, by itself, would not be a sufficient reason to support her. But in a world that has seen a Margaret Thatcher, and now sees an Angela Merkel at the helm of a major Western democracy, the United States, a land proud of the opportunities it offers everyone, is overdue for a female chief executive. And Hillary Clinton is qualified to be that chief executive. That she would make history is a bonus.

Clinton's flaws are well-known, too. She has a taste for expediency. She supported the war in Iraq. Questions remain about whether Clinton as secretary of state took sufficient measures to protect the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, who with three other Americans was murdered in Benghazi in 2012.

Clinton is not transparent, something she demonstrated by using a private email server while she was secretary of state -- an action that has drawn the attention of the Justice Department because at least some of the emails that passed through that server contained information that, either then or later, was deemed classified.

Our editorial board has been highly critical of Clinton's decision to shield her emails from public scrutiny even as the State Department, which she led, was trying to archive its emails. When accusations first surfaced last year that intelligence secrets may occasionally have passed through her server, we editorialized that, if true, such inattention to the handling of classified material along with the secretiveness that caused Clinton to use a private email server in the first place constituted a likely "disqualification from the White House."

We now acknowledge that to have been an overstatement. The server was ill-advised, but no one yet has found her actions to be illegal. Those decisions do not disqualify her from the office. Instead, they are illustrative of flaws Clinton can, and must, correct.

Beyond the server issue, it's impossible to recall another American political couple investigated more often or more deeply than Clinton and her husband, dating back to Bill Clinton's time as governor of Arkansas (1979-80 and 1983-92). Whatever Hillary Clinton's flaws, her Republican foes, fearful of Clinton's political prospects, have waged what amounts to 30-plus years of relentless war against her.

And yet still she stands - likely poised for her party's presidential nomination. With early voting already underway in Ohio's March 15 primary, Democrats' choice is clear: Hillary Clinton for president.

An Opposing View for Bernie Sanders.