In an interview this week with New York magazine, comedian Chris Rock was asked to predict which Republican candidate would face off against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential contest. He immediately rejected the premise of the question — i.e., that Clinton is a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination.

“It’s still not a done deal with Hillary,” Rock said. “Remember, she was ahead last time. She had all the black people. And she lost to somebody she really shouldn’t have lost to.”

Interviewer Frank Rich agreed. “Obama came out of nowhere, basically,” he said. “Who in the Democratic Party could go after Hillary, though?”

“There was no Barack Obama until Barack Obama either,” Rock replied.

Versions of this argument — Don’t worry, liberals: Hillary looked like a sure thing last time, too … until a better candidate saved the day — have been gaining traction recently.

There’s only one problem: History doesn’t support Rock’s thesis.

At this point in the 2008 cycle (the first week of December 2006) Barack Obama was already Barack Obama. His official announcement may have been two months off, but even then, he had a ton of money. He had a ton of media attention. He was hinting — heavily — that he was going to run. And the polling plainly showed that he was competitive.

Exactly eight years later, Obama’s would-be successors — the three candidates who have openly expressed interest in challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 — are so far behind Obama’s December 2006 benchmarks on each of these metrics that it would take a miracle for any of them to catch up.

In fact, the only person who comes close to measuring up to Obama circa 2006 has repeatedly said that she will not run: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Of course, even if Clinton were to capture the Democratic nomination in 2016, the general election would be anything but a coronation. The potential Republican field is full of fresh faces (Marco Rubio, Chris Christie) and seasoned pros (Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee), and the eventual nominee is likely to emerge battle-tested and ready to give Clinton a run for her money.

Still, a close reading of the record suggests that if Warren doesn’t get into the race, Clinton is not likely to face an Obama-caliber primary challenge. Let’s rewind to December 2006 and take a look at where things stood for Obama back then versus where things stand right now:

Money: In December 2006, Democrats were just coming off a stunning midterm victory — the party won control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994 — and observers were praising Obama as the cycle’s star surrogate. “Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has become the prize catch of the midterm campaign,” wrote Anne Kornblut of The New York Times. “More sought after than virtually every other Democrat, Mr. Obama was fully booked, long ago, on a schedule to take him across a large swath of the country to help his party try to win control of Congress.”

Obama’s finances bore this out. Even though he wasn’t running for office himself — he had just become a U.S. senator two years earlier — Obama managed to raise a staggering $4.39 million through his leadership PAC, Hope Fund, over the course of the cycle, plus another $1.02 million through his candidate committee, according to the Federal Election Commission. And he didn’t just speak on behalf of his fellow Democrats; he shelled out a grand total of $770,968 to help them get elected. None of Obama’s potential 2008 rivals — Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd — handed out nearly as much cash that year.

So how do today’s would-be Obamas compare? It’s not even close. Since the beginning of 2013, Bernie Sanders has raised $1.4 million and funneled $136,000 to other candidates. Martin O’Malley has raked in slightly less ($1.2 million) and spent a bit more ($296,497). And Jim Webb has barely registered at all, collecting a paltry $38,121 and donating exactly $0 to his fellow Democrats. In 2006, Obama spent the entire pre-presidential midterm cycle collecting chits and flexing his fundraising muscle. Sanders, Webb and O’Malley have not kept pace.

Media: On Oct. 17, 2006, Obama published “The Audacity of Hope,” a book that detailed his policy positions on a host of issues (education, health care, the war in Iraq) and served as a “thesis submission” for the U.S. presidency, as former presidential candidate Gary Hart put it at the time. By Nov. 9, The New York Times was declaring it a “surprise” hit. “The Audacity of Hope” seemed “primed for best-selling status,” wrote Julie Bosman. “But its rapid rise to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list next Sunday, placing the author, the freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, ahead of heavyweight authors like John Grisham, Bill O’Reilly and even Bob Woodward, is something of a publishing stunner.”

Bosman shouldn’t have been surprised. By late 2006, Obama — who’d skyrocketed to national stardom more than two years earlier with his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention — had already appeared on dozens of major magazine covers. One of them was the cover of Newsweek’s big year-end “Who’s Next” issue in 2004 — an accomplishment that he would repeat two years later when he showed up alongside Hillary Clinton on the December 2006 edition of “Who’s Next,” making him the franchise’s first (and only) two-time cover boy. Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father,” had also been a best-seller. During the first seven days of December 2006, the Illinois senator’s name was mentioned in more than 650 U.S. new stories, according to a search of the Nexis archives. And when Obama traveled to New Hampshire for the first time on Dec. 10, 150 journalists followed him there.

“Has he cast some kind of magic spell over the normally hard-bitten, cynical, run-over-your-grandmother-for-a-story press corps?” wrote Howard Kurtz in a column headlined “The Media’s New Rock Star.” “Or are they just engaged in the audacity of hope that they might get to cover a young and exciting African-American candidate with a shot at winning?”

Neither Sanders, Webb nor O’Malley has inspired — or fueled — this sort of media frenzy. Sanders’ last proper book was published in 2011; it currently ranks 141,416th on Amazon.com. Webb’s ranks 34,153rd. O’Malley has yet to publish a book. None of them was mentioned in more than 80 U.S. news stories over the last seven days. And there’s little chance that any of them will attract 150 reporters next time they visit New Hampshire.

Polling: This one is fairly straightforward. According to Real Clear Politics, five major outlets released Democratic presidential primary polls during the first two weeks of December 2006. They showed Clinton leading Obama by an average of 20 percentage points; Obama’s support averaged 15.8 percentage points; Clinton’s averaged 35.8.
This December is different. Right now, Sanders is averaging 3.5 percent in the 2016 polls. Webb is averaging 1.4 percent. O’Malley is averaging 1.2 percent. And Clinton is averaging 62.7 percent.

In December 2006, Barack Obama was already the second-most-popular politician in the country. He had already gained a significant amount of support among Democrats. And even though Clinton was way ahead, she wasn’t even close to getting 50 percent of the primary vote.

Today, almost two-thirds of Democrats support Clinton. Statistically speaking, she’s nearly twice as strong as she was eight years ago. Meanwhile, the three politicians who are explicitly considering challenging her — Sanders, Webb and O’Malley — are nowhere near where Obama was in the polls at this point in the 2008 cycle.

Which isn’t to say that, should they choose to compete in 2016, Sanders, Webb and O’Malley would be poor candidates. Anything can happen in politics; perhaps one of them will run to Clinton’s left and energize liberals who crave a less “inevitable” nominee.

The point is simply that by December 2006, Obama was already much, much closer to becoming that candidate than any of this year’s openly interested alternatives.

Which brings us back to a candidate who isn’t openly interested yet: Elizabeth Warren.

Sure, by December 2006, the real Obama was already out in the bullpen, warming up for all to see. In September, he flew to Iowa for Tom Harkin’s famous steak fry. In October, he appeared on “Meet the Press” and told Tim Russert that “it is true that I have thought about [running for president] over the last several months.” And by mid-December, Obama insiders were telling Newsweek that their man was “about 80 percent likely” to run.

Warren, on the other hand, has insisted that she isn’t running. But what if she were to change her mind?

Many liberals are urging Warren to step up because they believe her brand of economic populism could bedevil Clinton much in the way that Obama’s anti-Iraq-War message bedeviled Clinton in 2008. And on paper, at least, they’re right: She’s the only Democrat who even remotely resembles Obama (circa December 2006) in terms of fundraising skill, media appeal and polling prowess. Warren’s latest book, published earlier this year, was a New York Times best-seller. She was the Democratic Party’s most in-demand surrogate of 2014. She raised $4.59 million this cycle and disbursed nearly $600,000 to other Democrats. And she’s polling as high as 17 percent in recent surveys.

The bottom line is that Obama didn’t “come out of nowhere” in 2008 — but in 2016, Webb, Sanders and O’Malley would have to. So far, only Warren is on the map.