Republicans and conservatives—who are not always the same group—have had a fantasy for some time that Hillary Clinton—already reasonably beatable in a general election—may be defeated in the primary due to the email scandal. Cooler heads, usually prevailing, remind us that she is a Clinton, and that if anyone can brush away these spider eggs and breeze into the White House, it’s her.

But maybe not. Two signals of real trouble have appeared in the last 24 hours, one internal and one external. And when you have a problem hitting you in both directions, you don’t have to be Sun Tzu to know there’s a big deal afoot.

Internally, we had Hillary Clinton talking to the press about the email scandal. She was asked whether she had, in fact, wiped the server. “With a cloth?” she asked, feigning confusion. She added that she doesn’t understand digital technology well enough to know what that term meant.

She might just as well have added “I’m a cute, blonde bimbo who’s just too ditzy-witzy to understand compooters,” She’s clearly attempting to convey that any illegalities couldn’t be her fault because she doesn’t even know what the term “wipe” means when erasing data. Of course, she refuted that instantly by mentioning she doesn’t understand any phrases that pertain to erasing data. This is like saying you don’t know what it means to “apex a turn,” because you “don’t know enough about driving a line.” Race fans know you’re full of it.

At this point, Hillary Clinton is no longer trying to win the presidency: she’s working hard to keep herself out of prison.So why is this line significant? Because nobody is going to believe it in the press. And nobody is going to believe it in the party. Voters will either know she’s lying (millions of Democrats know what it means to wipe a server) or will not understand (what’s a server?) either way.

So who might believe it? A jury pool.

At this point, Hillary Clinton is no longer trying to win the presidency: she’s working hard to keep herself out of prison. And that’s a significant change in tack that explains a lot of her behavior in the last two weeks. The moment that server was turned over to the FBI, this went from being a PR problem to a legal defense strategy. It is possible that people deep inside her campaign recognize this is over: there’s no turning this around. Look for high-level staff members to quietly resign and take on jobs far from where they can be subpoenaed.

Plus, there’s the external factor as well: how liberal progressives react to bad news.

Remember Anthony Weiner? Sure you do: he was the liberal progressive who was accused of sending salacious and pornographic pictures and texts to female staffers. For weeks, you will recall, the liberal progressives defended him, decrying the entire event as a partisan witch hunt. Here was a good man, a real player—and Republicans just want to destroy him for the fun of it.

Until it became obvious that this wasn’t a brief slip of judgment, or even a symptom of simple creepiness: the guy was an out-of-control addict who hurt the entire party. Then, with no other recourse, the liberal progressives destroyed him, denouncing him as some freakish heretic, and gouging him from their hieroglyphics. This is why the Czar asked if you remember him, because they do not. Weiner—who is undoubtedly still working behind the scenes anyway—has become invisible. He’s one of many liberal progressives who got caught and violently expunged after it became impossible to hide.

What a curiously parallel track we find with Secretary Clinton: she was long-rumored to be up to something illegal. She denied it, deflected it, concealed it, and ignored it. Eventually, she was forced to hand over the server to the refreshingly non-partisan FBI, who recovered the data—you already know how bad it looks. There’s hundreds of emails already, and more each day, that never should have been sent or received. Confirmation the server resided in a bathroom at an unsecured facility belonging to a company that lacked security clearance. And there’s ample evidence the Russians and the Chinese read every email on it.

The media, the party, and the campaign are calling this a partisan witch hunt, attacking a good woman because—hey, we said this already! It’s getting impossible for Hillary to hide.

So what’s next? Well, she should be bracing herself for that backlash. It can be a doozy.