The latest polling shapshot, provided by New York Times/CBS News, shows that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are now more or less even. The poll showed that while Clinton avoided an F.B.I. indictment for her “extremely careless” email behavior while Secretary of State, this makes no difference with voters. They don’t like her “with a large and growing majority saying she’s not honest and not trustworthy,” says the Times piece.

“Get the stretcher, nurse, and a strong sedative. Voters are saying that the most ludicrously unqualified candidate for President in the history of the U.S. is no worse or no better than Hillary Clinton, which indicates she could actually, theoretically lose. This possibility is just starting to sink in for the first time, and she’s going into shock.”

No question about it — Hillary is a wounded candidate. She’s on the ropes. She’s everything that angry voters don’t want is this turbulent election season. We’re in one of those “throw the bums out” moments, and roughly half the electorate wants to give her the heave-ho.

But if Hillary chooses Elizabeth Warren as her vp running mate, all the mud will start to fall away. Warren could be Hillary’s great cleanser or spot-remover. Tim Kaine is an amiable go-along guy, a career politician, a liberal pudgeball with thinning hair and a basketball-shaped head. His presence on the ticket says “more of the same.” And you know Kaine’s presence won’t wash away or dilute Hillary’s sins. But Warren’s could.

By choosing Warren Hillary would effectively be saying this to voters: “Look, I get it — you don’t trust me or even like me…but you know Elizabeth Warren is honest and true and a real-deal crusader, and by my picking her I’m saying two things. One, that she’s better than me and I know it — she radiates open vibes, she isn’t wounded, she’s clean and robust and full of rhetorical fire. And two, she’ll provide a kind of balance or antidote to the ‘crooked Hillary’ thing, which obviously many of you have bought into. She’s the great diluter of my alleged crookedness. She’s the sugar in my once-sour lemonade. She un-dirties me.”