No one has ever been nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president while under indictment, or having been charged with a felony then acquitted before the election, let alone be a convicted felon.

For over two centuries, only a handful of sitting members of Congress have been expelled after being convicted for committing a felony.  Several have won re-election while under indictment. At least one was re-elected as a convicted felon.

Voters in Massachusetts deserve a special category of ignominy having sent Barney Frank to Congress for twelve terms after his implication in a male prostitution ring; for re-electing Gerry Studds six times after his censure by Congress for having gay sex with an underage congressional page; and of course for returning Ted Kennedy to the US Senate five times, after he narrowly escaped a grand jury indictment over Mary Jo Kopechne’s asphyxiation death in his abandoned Oldsmobile off Chappaquiddick Island.  Massachusetts is the role model, notwithstanding stiff competition from Illinois, where Democratic Party ideology and loyalty excuses criminal conduct.

While criminal conduct, and even convicted felons, have darkened the US Capitol and numerous state houses, and two modern presidents have been stung by their criminal conduct in office -- one resigned in disgrace, the other was impeached -- we have been spared having to face a major party presidential candidate with a criminal record.

Will Hillary Clinton break the glass ceiling as the first felon to be the Democratic Party’s nominee to be president? 

Imagine Hillary, the Democrats’ champion awaiting indictment, or facing a trial if her email irregularities explode, as teased by Andrew McCarthy.

Akin to notable perjurers of recent vintage -- upscale living and insider trading bella donna Martha Stewart, investment fraudster Bernie Madoff, and of course wandering loins president Bill Clinton -- Hillary may be trapped by an obscure lie to the federal government. It all revolves around a seemingly simple form, the OF-109 Separation Statement, that requires a departing State Department employee to declare that he/she has surrendered any and all documents.

If Hillary signed the Form OF-109 she violated its terms by both destroying classified and unclassified documents and failing to turn them over. If she never signed OF-109, it would be a willful evasion of an affirmative duty.

Many presidential candidates have faced strong innuendo, even explicit charges about corruption.  Few have escaped complaints about their agile campaign finance gymnastics.  Others have been tainted with purported associations with mobsters, communists, and tax cheats, and accepting “honoraria” in exchange for campaign promises. At least one, John Kerry, couldn’t rinse away the stain from his questionable acquisition of medals while in Vietnam, his feigning of throwing them away during antiwar protests, and his contacts with the North Vietnamese following the war.

Hillary’s lifelong dalliance with deception and corruption is stipulated, even by her ardent loyalists, in some cases.  Her Praetorian guards will admit her reputation is a heavily seeded cloud preceding, shadowing, and trailing her wherever she goes, an ever-threatening hailstorm, albeit unfairly attached according to her defenders. “Old news” is the best they can come up with urging voters to ignore still another scandal and cover-up.

Democrats have perfected the art of elevating identity as the cardinal attribute of anyone running for office. Multi-culturalism, race, gender, and sexual preference are used to neutralize so-called white male privilege to advance the tyranny of equal outcomes.  Identity preferences first trumped competence and accomplishment. That’s how Barack Obama was sworn in as the first black president.

Next up is to elevate a woman to the White House.  Democrats are already doubling down on identity trumping competence and achievement, while adding criminal conduct to the fitness profile that is now considered irrelevant. Hillary Clinton is the singular play using the gender card; nothing else matters.

Moreover, introducing the fitness profile -- competence, accomplishment, integrity, moral courage, and decency -- is considered hateful, racist, or sexist when the identity candidate fails any of those fitness tests. Hillary fails all of them.

Which is why the Democratic Party is in wholesale disarray and meltdown across the nation.  Republicans control more state houses and governorships than any time since the 1920s. In state and local elections, the ideals of competence, accomplishment, integrity, moral courage, and decency combined with policy initiatives to reduce taxes, shrink government, expand economic incentives, restore personal liberty and autonomy, have swept the nation.

Of course the Republican leadership in Washington hasn’t yet caught up to the mood of the country. Boehner, McConnell & Co may be stuck on power, and weak-kneed accommodation. But at least they aren’t stuck on identity as the sole criterion for holding public office. On the other side, Democrats have nothing to run on except race, and now gender, exclusively.

The electorate was shamed into electing a black symbol as president. For all of his defects, at least Barack Obama wasn’t a corrupt bargain who failed a criminal background check. Hillary’s presidential platform begs Americans to elevate corruption and criminal conduct into the Oval Office for the sake of a hollow meaningless gender victory.  That’s a price even the most irrepressible identity intercessors won’t pay.