Which is why any “Hillary Loses” scenario has to involve some extra-political event, some scandal beyond anything the Clintons have endured before. And here I’m afraid that I am a bit cynical: While the email scandal is a serious business, I simply do not believe that the Obama Justice Department is going to indict the former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner for mishandling classified information, even if the offenses involved would have sunk a lesser figure’s career or landed her in jail.

And to continue to wax cynical, I think it would take an indictment of Herself, not merely an investigation that ultimately finds a fall guy in Clinton’s IT team or even among her intimates, to turn Democratic primary voters against Hillary or force her from the race.

Because absent an indictment— or, I suppose, an email showing her deliberately accepting payola from Vladimir Putin — the email affair, no less than the shady Clinton Foundation dealings, looks like the kind of scandal that Clinton supporters have long conditioned themselves to justify: An inappropriate and self-interested episode, clumsily covered over, but at once murky and slow-dripping enough for Democratic partisans to shrug, say, “LOLBenghazi” and move on.