If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are so confident of winning this election, why are they becoming more hysterical by the day?

“You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,” she said Friday night in New York. “Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

The national polls are pretty much dead even right now. So Hillary just wrote off one-quarter of the U.S. population — 80 million or so Americans. Four years ago, Mitt Romney casually mentioned the “47 percent” who don’t work and he instantly became the world’s worst human being.

Hillary says much, much worse and … nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Remember, this is a woman who in 2010 described a former exalted cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan as her “mentor.” She has also repeatedly lauded Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who wrote of her plans to use abortion to “exterminate the Negro population.”

So I guess it takes one to know one. Lucky for Hillary, it’s only hate speech if a Republican says it.

But obviously the Democrats are sweating. Just ask Matt ?Lauer. I think it’s safe to say that he’s no longer on the short list for a Profiles in Courage Award next spring. Boy, are his fellow moonbats angry at Matt after that forum with Hillary and Trump on Wednesday night.

Lucky for Matt we’re past ?Labor Day because he would never get an invite to any of the better cocktail parties in the Hamptons after he had the ?temerity to actually ask Hillary Clinton about the missing emails.

“He was harder,” The New York Times wrote in disbelief, “on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Trump.”

How dare he? Where the hell is Candy Crowley when you ?really need her? Paging George Stephanopoulos …

“For the sake of the nation,” the Times tut-tutted, “the moderators need to be fully prepared to challenge the candidates.”

Actually, just one candidate.

The Washington Post put this headline over its Matt-Lauer-is-now-a-nonperson editorial:

“The Hillary Clinton email story is out of control.”

Sounds exactly like what the Nixon administration used to say about the Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate.

Can the powers-that-be make it any clearer? Any moderator in the upcoming debates who plays it even close to down the middle will be disemboweled. As Lauer now knows to his chagrin, any substantive questions to Hillary will be treated as lese majeste. No, make that blasphemy.

Anonymous quotes allegedly from your bosses will describe you as a “disaster.” Late-night hosts you’ve barely heard of and never watched will suddenly be quoted with great respect — and by the way, who is Trevor Noah, or is it Noah Trevor, and does he know any of the other D-list celebs who are threatening to leave the country if Trump wins?

Seriously, who are these ?people — Keegan-Michael Key? Chloe Sevigny? Amber Rose? Eddie Griffin? Natasha Lyonne? Omari Hardwick? I never knew any of these people were here until they said they were planning to leave.

The hysteria about Hillary’s fade in the polls has spread into the highest reaches of the Democrat establishment. James ?Comey, the in-the-satchel ?director of the FBI, sent out a fascinating email to the troops last week, defending the inde-?fensible, i.e., his brooming of Hillary’s multiple felonies.

First he said, “You may be sick of this,” which can be translated as “I am sick of this!”

Then he detailed what he claimed his G-men had accomplished:

“Commitment to transparency … providing transparency … unprecedented … unprecedented transparency … we had promised transparency … unprecedented transparency … .”

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

The louder James Comey speaks of his transparency — the more rocks we look under.

Listen to Howie 3-7 p.m. weekdays on WRKO AM 680.