Getty Opinion Hillary’s Hollow Debate Victory That she's the most electable Democrat doesn't mean she's electable.

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.

Hillary Clinton’s laugh is so often transparently forced and insincere that it is a staple of Kate McKinnon’s impression of her on “Saturday Night Live.”

At the Democratic debate in Las Vegas, though, the former secretary of state let loose a long peal of amused delight and relief that had about it a strong hint of genuineness. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had just said we had heard enough about her “damn emails.”


The crowd erupted in a standing ovation. Sanders had the signature line of the night, and it was in the cause of buttressing his opponent. He had put away the email issue for the debate — and perhaps for the duration of the primary campaign.

Certainly Sanders can never return to it. As for the others, CNN moderator Anderson Cooper prodded Lincoln Chafee on Clinton’s email immediately afterward, and he mumbled something about American credibility after the intelligence failure in the run-up to the Iraq War. He then boldly ventured that the next president should have high ethical standards, before adding apologetically, “that’s how I feel.”

Martin O’Malley has been the toughest over the past few months on the scandal. When Cooper asked him about the email, the former Maryland governor wheeled to make a vicious attack … on Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for not allowing more debates and concluded his answer on the emails with a clarion call “to make America 100 percent clean electric by 2050.”

If Joe Biden was sitting at home plotting his electability case against Clinton based on her ethics, the episode had to give him pause. Democrats evidently have about as much interest in delving into Hillary’s email and related controversies as they do in litigating Bill Clinton’s impeachment again.

Las Vegas was a reminder that it is awfully hard to lose a nomination if no one truly plausible, let alone formidable, is running against you. The structure of the Democratic race from the beginning has been been about propping up Hillary Clinton, and it still is. The party is putting on a master class in how to nominate someone under FBI investigation, and is willfully in denial about her vulnerabilities.

Yes, Hillary had a good night. She was polished, knowledgeable, shrewd and hard-hitting— clearly, not someone to be trifled with. But the debate was a false indicator of her strength.

First, consider her competition (so far). Three former officeholders with nothing better to do, and one current officeholder who was crazy enough to launch a no-hope bid that has caught fire in the precincts of progressive America, but who isn’t taken seriously as a general election candidate — and probably never will be.

The CNN debate was like Jeb Bush swooping in and dominating a debate against Jim Gilmore, George Pataki and Lindsey Graham, and everyone concluding he’s a marvelous performer and it’s time for the bed-wetters to stop worrying about his candidacy.

On top of their plausibility or lack thereof, Hillary’s opponents have an instinct for the capillary, not the jugular. One candidate (Sanders) wants to argue that she isn’t socialist enough. Another (Chafee) wants to go after her hammer and tongs on an Iraq War vote from more than a decade ago. Yet another (O’Malley) wants to make the case against her on something or other. And, finally, there’s the candidate (Jim Webb) who wants to prove her unsuitability for the Democratic Party circa 1948. If she can’t handle these challenges, she is truly in a meltdown.

Second, Las Vegas wasn’t much of a road test of the issues bedeviling her candidacy. She was able to brush off not only the email story, but questions about her foreign policy failures and her cynical shifts in position, although not without creating some potential fodder (calling the Libyan intervention a “smart power at its best” will be hard to defend, and “I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone” has a John Kerry-esque ring).

Outside of the friendly confines of Democratic debate hall, all this will continue to be pursued by the media, the GOP and, most importantly, the FBI. Clinton remains a hostage to fortune in what the Feds conclude about the lawfulness of her private server and email arrangement — and what is yet to be found on her emails.

Finally, Hillary Clinton’s problem is not Democrats. She has lost some altitude with them, and Sanders is a real threat in the early states (although his debate performance was rocky, his core socialist message will continue to stand him in good stead). It’s with the rest of voters that she’s been tanking.

There is a drastic split between how her party and the rest of the country considers her. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats say she is honest and trustworthy in the latest CBS poll; 61 percent of all voters say she is not. She has a 69 percent-19 percent favorable/unfavorable rating among Democrats; among the general public, she is badly upside down, with 33 percent-53 percent favorable/unfavorable ratings. By way of comparison, Donald Trump, who has trampled on every political piety and gone out of his way to offend entire groups of people, has favorable-unfavorable ratings roughly equal to Clinton’s.

In the latest Fox poll, she loses nationally to Trump, Bush, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson. Yet, Democrats consider her the most electable of their candidates. It’s not a great tribute to Hillary Clinton that they are right.