I had a way-too-long column appearing in the American Spectator this morning in which I prematurely gloat about the crackup of the Democrats and reiterate my prediction that ultimately they’re going to sell out to Mike Bloomberg as their nominee…

You’ve seen the discussions the former New York mayor has touched off in the past couple of weeks, though he’s contemplating an independent run against a Trump-Sanders or Cruz-Sanders matchup. But that won’t be necessary if the Democrats are in collapse, and in the event they’re faced with a Clinton who has to leave the race and a Sanders who takes that party into open socialism, don’t be surprised if they happily opt to go down the tubes with an obnoxious one-percenter who buys up the party and self-funds a billion-dollar campaign.

Because at that point the Democrats will understand that 2016 isn’t their year, and they’ll be more than willing to let the self-funder lose the presidential race while they concentrate their resources on trying to win back the Senate when there are 24 Republican seats and only 10 Democrats up for re-election. A Senate in Democrat hands could largely stop a President Cruz or Rubio from implementing a wholesale snapback of the Obama agenda, and that could be their saving grace. And Bloomberg could buy the nomination at the convention even if he doesn’t join the race until its later stages — there are 712 superdelegates holding votes at the convention, remember, which is one-third of the 2,382 needed for election, and Bloomberg is likely to pick up everything Hillary gathers in advance of her implosion.

The piece lays out the case for Hillary’s e-mail scandal going nuclear as a criminal matter and the dilemma it will cause for the president. After all, so far Obama comes off as a victim of Hillary’s use of that unsecured private server, but he becomes a willing accomplice very soon…

It’s entirely possible that Obama squelches the indictment in hopes that Hillary can ride out the political storm that would come. There’s a problem with this, though — which is that if Obama saves her, it’s no longer about Hillary. It is then about Obama. At that point, the words “cover-up” get thrown around with authority, and if and when the FBI and the intelligence community decide to start airing dirty laundry in the press not just about the Hillary investigation but the White House itself, this thing becomes a lot larger scandal than it is now.

Let’s not forget, though naturally it was given short shrift in the media after it came out last week, that among the e-mails we won’t see from Hillary’s private, unsecured server were 18 messages between the Secretary of State and the president himself — the contents of which can’t be seen, naturally, because the material is classified. As Andrew McCarthy wrote at National Review, if you’re looking for a reason why we’ve yet to see what should be an obvious indictment, that sure looks like one.

The easy thing to believe is Obama won’t let Hillary go down to an indictment, but it’s more complicated than that. What will Obama sacrifice for her? Because if he saves her and she doesn’t win, he and his White House staffers could well bear the cost of a Justice Department investigation that begins in earnest on Jan. 20, 2017. And for what? The statute of limitations won’t run on Hillary’s potential crimes before then; she could easily be indicted a year from now on the same investigative product the FBI is accumulating as you read this column. The only difference is if there is evidence of a cover-up she won’t be alone

And while we all know that the Democrat Party is a socialist party at the moment, Democrats really don’t like to advertise that fact. Which makes Bernie Sanders especially unpalatable and something to be avoided. As Hillary goes down the tubes, the scrambling to screw Sanders out of the nomination begins.

Bloomberg makes more sense than Biden to do that, because Biden doesn’t have any money. And as said above, once Hillary has completely tanked the Democrats are going to be looking for silver linings among what will appear a hopeless presidential cycle. With Biden, they’ll have to pour their resources into a losing race to keep from getting slaughtered by the GOP nominee. With Sanders the down-ballot damage of having their House and Senate candidates running on an openly socialist ticket will be far too great. With Bloomberg, they don’t have to raise their presidential candidate a red cent and but for his nanny-state obnoxiousness they can claim he’s a centrist while spending all their resources down-ballot as he self-funds.

This isn’t an idle prediction. I made it eight months ago when no opponent with any viability stepped forward to challenge Clinton, and I stand by it.

– Lest you get swept onto the bandwagon of those who say Bernie Sanders’ showing in Iowa is an indication he has the imagination of the Democrats, understand that Democrat turnout in the Iowa caucuses was down by 30 percent from 2008. Bernie Sanders is not a “thing” the way Obama was a thing; his appeal is ideological and it reaches about 20-25 percent of the electorate. He might get more than that in a general election just out of party loyalty, of course, but even in the declining state of our culture there are only a small few deep-blue states where Bernie Sanders could get an electoral majority.

– In New Hampshire and South Carolina, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both appear to be gaining on Donald Trump – to such an extent that it’s possible Trump’s lead in the polls might evaporate into a second-place finish in one or both primaries. That would be an indication that Trump Fever is beginning to break if it happens, but the conventional wisdom holds that if nothing else Trump has Nevada.

That remains to be seen. Cruz has something of an ace up his sleeve there, in that he has raised an issue which could well be a surprise hot button in that state. Nevada’s land, after all, is federal land – some 85 percent of the state is owned by the federal government, and with the recent spate of dust-ups between the feds and their private landowner neighbors, not to mention frequent whiffs of corruption within the Bureau of Land Management, there is a movement in many Western states to get the federal government out of the landowning business altogether – or at least as much as possible.

And Cruz has given voice to that movement.

Don’t be surprised if he makes transferring large amounts of federal land to the states a big issue in Nevada and gains a lot of support as a result. It could well be a knife he sticks in Trump’s belly there, as the latter has made some flippant comments to the effect he wants to keep the land federal so it will stay great.

Trump owns a casino, and the casino business in Nevada is like the oil business in Louisiana or the ethanol business in Iowa, so he has an advantage. But he’s vulnerable on that issue and it can be exploited.

– Back to Hillary for a second – did you catch this the other night?

In Washington there are lots of rumors that Hillary is a lush, and that she’s drunk a lot. After seeing that clip it’s hard to deny those. She looks like she’s lit up like a Christmas tree.

– Speaking of lit up, how about a little animation of Mt. Vesuvius erupting and burying the city of Pompeii? This is three years old and you may have already seen it. If so, you’re excused.