Lotttttta Bat signals in the sky right now, hoping that Diamond Joe will see them and come to the rescue.

We’ve reached the point, my friends, where a guy given to saying things like “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent” is the last, best hope of the Democratic Party.

As Democratic Party insiders gather for their summer meeting, there is a growing undercurrent of concern whether Hillary Clinton would be the party’s strongest candidate to keep the White House next year. They still like and mostly support her. But many are increasingly questioning her handling of official emails while Secretary of State and her response to the furor over it. Some worry about her ability to connect with voters. And all this is aggravated by Vice President Joe Biden and his supporters stepping up their soundings on whether to mount a challenge. The controversy over Clinton’s email “muddles the thinking of a lot of people,” said Alexandra Rooker of West Sacramento, vice chair of the state party in California… Party officials most of all want a winner, and are open to a Biden bid.

The NYT interviewed no less than 75 Democratic movers and shakers and found widespread “bewilderment” at how Hillary’s handled the e-mail scandal, which I take it is party-speak for abject panic that this anchor’s going to drag them down through the sheer weight of accumulated corruption. Not a single person interviewed will admit to worrying that something even more disastrous than “top secret” documents will turn up on the server, although the Times does allow at one point, in discussing Team Clinton’s whiny frustration at how “unfair” the media’s being, that “Aides have privately told supporters that the email issue is not going away anytime soon.” Hmmmm. Among the Democratic apparatchiks quoted as being critical of Hillary is former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, one of her most loyal surrogates on the trail against Obama in 2008, who slammed her for handling the e-mail issue “poorly, maybe atrociously, certainly horribly” and wondered why she didn’t turn over the server from the beginning. Double hmmmmm. Any theories on that, by the way? Lay aside the not so minor problem of storing classified material on the server. Anyone want to float a possible explanation for why Hillary Clinton, who took her e-mail correspondence outside official State channels because she didn’t want the feds having easy access to it, wouldn’t want to turn over that correspondence immediately? It makes no sense — if you assume she has clean hands. What if you assume she doesn’t?

If you care about getting to the bottom of what she did, and you should, our best chance of finding out is for this investigation to go fully bipartisan by Biden jumping in and his surrogates demanding answers as well. Speaking of which, lump me in with James Poulos and Jim Geraghty in thinking that Biden will be a more formidable candidate than many Republicans expect. The popular image of him on the right, as a hapless buffoon prone to putting his foot in his mouth, is fun — Glenn Beck broke out into outright laughter a few days ago when CNN asked him about the prospect of Biden running — but he’s a sitting VP, has more of a common touch with voters than most of the GOP field does, and will have lots of sympathy from people touched by his grief over the loss of his son Beau. If he does in fact end up adding Elizabeth Warren to the ticket, he’ll also have enthusiastic liberal support. He’s not a joke candidate. Apart from her fundraising, he’s certainly less of a joke than Hillary is.