Maybe John Kasich is right when he jokes that he's running in the wrong primary.

Hillary Clinton's candidacy is beached, and it's anybody's guess whether another fifty million dollars, another hundred celebrity endorsements, or hundreds of super-delegates are enough to push the big white whale back into the ocean.   

It looks as though even if she makes it to the convention, beating Bernie fair and square, which would the first time in her life Hillary ever faired and squared anybody, there will be a tremendous revulsion among an amazing number of Democrat women.  This especially from the downy-cheeked liberal arts types hoping to see the barn-burning Sandinista from Vermont rivet a worker's paradise on our backs in order to usher in a fairer, more diverse, inclusive, sensitive, and "caring" America – a nation shorn of any trace of glass ceilings, gluten, soybean oil, fossil fuels, all-white Oscars, and plastic supermarket shopping bags. 

Hillary can't afford to have those women sit this one out.  She needs to shame or frighten every liberal woman into voting for her, just as she needs every minority vote; every government employee; every gay, lesbian, and transsexual; every radical environmentalist; and every inner-city Ohioan who cast six or seven ballots in 2012. 

Otherwise, she won't win the general.

Because nobody really likes her, and the betting is even Steven that she'll be indicted by the Obama administration despite her increasingly pathetic campaign promises to continue his legacy.  Not to mention the almost certain wager that a pair of her panties is about to be discovered under the passenger seat in one of Goldman Sachs's limousines.

But the only other national name the Democrats have in addition to Michelle Obama (wouldn't that be rich?) is Joe Biden, and he isn't much of an alternative.  The man certainly looks good in a suit – that is, looks presidential; people do like him; and if elected, he'll mindlessly support the liberal agenda while lining the pockets of the left's crony capitalists, but problems rain down from the sky like the hail of frogs you sometimes get after a tornado whenever the poor fool opens his mouth.  This is true even when he steals his speeches, as he did Neil Kinnock's all those years ago, consequently having to drop out of that race for the presidency.

So unless the Democratic Party gets that great mammal floating again, they'll have to settle on someone else – someone now unsuspected and, more to the point, unbaggaged, like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.  Or resign themselves to having Donald Trump waterbroad (sic) them with a real vengeance by selecting the Liberal pastiche and sometime Native American Elizabeth Warren.

Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most, Random House, BDD.  See it here.  He lives and writes in the colonial-era hamlet of Stone Ridge, New York; blogs here; and can also be reached at miniterhome@gmail.com.