Doug Schoen, the Democratic pollster, drops a bombshell in today's Wall Street Journal:

There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president.

How could that happen, given that her nomination has been considered a sure thing by virtually everyone in the media and in the party itself? Consider the possibilities.

The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton’s nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen.

Schoen points out that in two significant polls, Hillary Clinton has a two point lead over Sanders–within the statistical margin for error. If Sanders does win California and goes on to a respectable showing in New Jersey, he might be inspired to rock the convention, demanding a vote on whether super-delegates should vote as their state primaries did.

Clinton is being hurt by polls showing that she could find herself in a close race with Donald Trump, a political newcomer, and by the growing worry that her ethical problems could overwhelm her candidacy.

In other Hillary news this morning, National Review's Shannen Coffin compares Mrs. Clinton's defense of her actions with regard to email to Seinfeld's George Constanza defending his misconduct. The defense in a nutshell: the rules were unclear and everybody is doing it anyway.

Remember when George has an after-hours sexual adventure with a cleaning woman and then fails to buy her silence with a defective cashmere sweater? Coffin recalls George's immortal defense:

“Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here, that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, ’cause I’ve worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.”
 

Now that you mention it, that does sound a lot like the putative Democratic nominee.

Schoen proposes that, if Mrs. Clinton doesn't survive, the Democrats might nominate Vice President Joe Biden, who in turn might pick progressive heartthrob Elizabeth Warren as his running mate.

Cosmetically, Biden might appeal to more people–he's goofy Uncle Joe and a lot of people instinctively like him–but the policies of a Biden-Warren administration would bring the country four to eight more years of the kind of stagnant economy and erosion of liberty we've seen during the Obama years.