Hillary Clinton in 2008 was closer in time both to her last election in 2006 and to her last competitive election in 2000. She did not have the FBI “A-Team” in possession of her private email server, investigating whether it compromised national security. She did not have “senior intelligence officials” leaking to the New York Times that she had received “highly classified information” on the email account hosted by her private server. She did not have a judge ordering the State Department to release tranches of her emails every few months. Her political and personal future did not depend on the outcome of decisions made at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC.

I can’t argue with the idea that elections are “about fundamentals.” The fundamentals of the 2008 election were these: In the midst of financial collapse and unpopular war a savvy group of political operatives guided a talented candidate to victory as the first African-American president. And the fundamentals of 2016 are these: In the midst of bipartisan outrage at the political establishment and an overwhelming desire for a change in the direction of the country, an increasingly unpopular candidate surrounded by yes-men and back-stabbers is hounded not only by an ongoing government investigation but by growing perceptions that she cannot be trusted and does not care about people. Don’t worry, though—after 30 years in public life, she’s finally going to show us her heart.

“The Clinton campaign has a new message for its supporters: No bed wetting,” Kristen Welker reported last month. “This is a familiar mantra we heard in the Obama campaign of 2008. Clinton officials say it applies now.”

It does not. The Clinton officials are wrong. If they aren’t already panicking—Tuesday’s “apology” for the email business is a sign that they might be—they really ought to start.