Nominee or Indictee?

While perhaps too early for Democratic elites to panic and begin bailing out on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as a doomed vessel, they would be well advised not to miss any of the lifeboat drills.

For Hillary’s campaign is taking on water at a rate that will sink her, if the leakage does not stop, and soon.

Initially, the issue of Hillary and the emails she sent and received as secretary of state seemed too wonkish, too complex, too trivial a matter to sink a candidacy as strong as hers.

How would the millions of Democratic women who have looked forward to the first woman president respond to Biden’s barreling in and finishing her off? How enthusiastic would those women and feminists be for a Candidate Biden who had delivered the deathblow to Hillary and blocked for another decade any chance of a woman as president?

Joe would certainly be up for Chauvinist of the Year 2015.

And other problems would arise for a Biden candidacy.

Would Bill and Hillary Clinton be out there stumping to help Joe win the presidency, when both had dreamed of her having it?

Joe would have to beat Bernie Sanders and rout the Elizabeth Warren liberals. He would have to woo back the big contributors in the Jewish community who believe Barack Obama and John Kerry threw Israel and Bibi under the bus to cut a deal that empowers the world’s leading “state sponsor of terrorism.”

If Joe is having second thoughts about getting in, who can blame him?

As the old saw goes, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

But for Democrats, such counsel comes too late. Hillary is carrying their basket of eggs, and slipping all over the sidewalk.

If they procrastinate in designating someone else to catch the basket if it falls, they get Bernie. But if they move too soon, they will be charged with sabotaging the last best chance for America to elect a woman president.

A nice problem for those ubiquitous cable TV talking heads who identify themselves as “Democratic strategists.”