Could this be the beginning of the end for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign?  The possibility most assuredly cannot be ruled out, for several reasons.

But first, the breaking news from the Washington Post, confirming that an FBI investigation actually is under way.  Normally, the Bureau does not comment on ongoing investigations, so the evidence comes from outside the agency.  No fewer than six reporters worked on the story (which is a hint of the seriousness of the topic), with Carol D. Leoning the lead author:

The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, according to two government officials.

Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Ken­dall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state.

The investigation is the natural consequence of a referral from the inspector general for the intelligence community.  And now the matter is in the hands of career agents at the FBI, people on whom political pressures operate with less force than elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy.

So where will this lead?

First of all, from the information already in the public domain, we know that Hillary Clinton violated laws regarding the misappropriation of secret data.  General David Petraeus was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to charges on these same issues, a case far too prominent to be ignored.

Second, Hillary’s inability to run a competent campaign has become not just an embarrassment, but a threat to many others in the Democratic Party, including President Obama himself.  Polling data now has her in a virtual statistical tie with Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.  Sanders would be a disaster for the party as the nominee, even though he excites the left-wing base.  Because he is honest about his anti-Wall Street intentions, he frightens the moneymen who back the party.  And because he is Jewish, he threatens black turnout in 2016 should he be at the top of the ticket.  Nobody else in the media wants to address this aspect of the situation, incidentally.  But I don’t think that any honest observer can deny that this is a factor in the thinking of party power brokers and Democrats facing the electorate in 2016, who depend on massive black turnout for their own political futures.

This is why Joe Biden is being pushed to enter the race despite his many obvious flaws.

Hillary’s fundamental problem is that she has become inconvenient to too many people in her own party.  There is no love lost between her and President Obama, not just because of the ugly racial innuendo used by the Clinton faction in South Carolina in 2007, but because there are two rival political machines vying for control of the Democratic Party.  If a Clinton captures the White House, the Obama faction loses career and monetary opportunities.

As I wrote yesterday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch could solve a lot of problems for herself and for her boss by appointing a special prosecutor for the Clinton email server scandal.  The current FBI investigation is the perfect predicate for such a move.

As my colleague Rick Moran noted, “[h]ow ironic!  Fast and Furious, IRS – all the scandals that could use a special prosecutor, and they end up appointing one to investigate a Democrat?”

It’s a matter of political convenience.  Special prosecutors for the other scandals would be inconvenient for President Obama.  One for Hillary would get her out of the race and offer the possibility of a Democrat victory in 2016 that would perpetuate the Obama machine as top dog in the party.