“Let me say something that may not be great politics. But I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.”

With those words, Bernie Sanders excused Hillary Clinton for a) violating State Department policy on private e-mail; b) disposing of public records without authority; c) misappropriating classified materials; d) covering up possible misconduct and conflicts of interest.

The Sanders campaign is effectively over. Before Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, there was only one path for him to reach the nomination: namely, to convince the party that Hillary Clinton’s scandals made so unelectable. Better a competent socialist than a crook, in other words.

Now, the burden is on Sanders to prove that he is electable on his own. His party’s base may agree with him and admire him, but the voters will not go that far.

What is particularly galling about Sanders’s excuse for Hillary Clinton, however, is that the e-mail scandal has all the hallmarks of the kind of corruption that Sanders promises to fight on Wall Street. Clinton raked in foreign cash for her family foundation while conducting the country’s business. There are even suggestions she allowed Russia to gain effective control of a huge chunk of America’s uranium deposits in return for a donation to her foundation.

Crony capitalism, conflicts of interest, and a massive cover-up–yet Sanders has no interest whatsoever. That is not only a sign he does not intend to mount a real challenge to win the Democratic Party nomination, but also evidence that he does not actually care about bringing a “political revolution” to Washington.

Bernie Sanders is perfectly fine with serious, possibly criminal, misconduct if Democrats are to blame? Then he is a fraud, and so is his campaign.