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ATTENTION Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and everyone else "seriously considering" a run for President.

You can stop pretending now.

The midterm elections, which traditionally double as the unofficial starting gun for the next presidential race, are finally over. But the truth is that the 2016 campaign has been underway for two years.

It started the moment President Barack Obama vanquished Mitt Romney two Novembers ago, when a multitude of Republicans began assigning blame for the loss and not-so-subtly offering themselves up as the future of the party. And Democrats started looking toward Clinton, the party's presumed standard-bearer, who was just months away from stepping down as secretary of state and wading back into the churn of the political world.

In a broad sense, the basic contours of the race have changed little since then. The choice in 2016 continues to look like a clash between Clinton and whichever Republican can emerge from a huge pack of ideologically diverse candidates.

But the internal dynamics of the Democratic and Republican races are shifting dramatically.

For Clinton, a two-year run on the lucrative paid-speaking circuit and a rocky national book tour renewed questions about her political instincts, and provided new ammo to Republicans eager to raise fresh questions about a historic political figure whose reputation is fairly well-baked into the public consciousness. But only a handful of Democrats seem willing to challenge her for the nomination, and none of them boast the kind of star power that Obama tapped to overcome the Clinton juggernaut in 2008.

Republicans, meanwhile, are still figuring out how to communicate with a changing electorate that - even after the Republican tsunami on Tuesday - still favors Democrats in presidential years. The party is bracing for an electoral free-for-all, the likes of which it has not seen since 1964 when conservative Barry Goldwater emerged from the Republican convention in San Francisco as the nominee. Unlike recent cycles, there is no de-facto front-runner - and even Romney has seen his name floated by Republicans anxious about a presidential field that is as unpredictable today as it was two years ago.

'Wide open' field

"The Republican field is wide open but a little more competitive than last time," said former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a GOP candidate in 2012. "While the Republican field was big last time, a lot of the folks running didn't have all the tools in the toolbox to put together a successful campaign. That's in contrast to this cycle, where the people being mentioned today have an existing reputation, can raise an incredible amount of money, and have more serious public policy credentials and positions."

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