Hillary Clinton is in a fight with Bernie Sanders

Before the State of the Union ever started, January 12 dawned as Black Tuesday for Hillary Clinton. She was hit by a trifecta of bad news.

First, The Hill newspaper in Washington reported that a US federal court has forced the Department of State to release extracts from 29,000 pages of emails to Hillary when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 from her closest aide Huma Abedin.

In a federal court filing on Monday, the State Department acknowledged that it would process at least 400 pages of emails from Abedin’s personal, non-government email account per month.

The chance of anything really embarrassing being produced by this latest flood of verbiage are negligible. But it will be a continuing itch at the very least.

Far more important – and ominous – for team Hillary were the results of the latest Quinnipiac University poll showing her trailing Senator Bernie Sanders by 44 percent to 40 percent in Iowa and by a whopping 30 percent to 53 percent in New Hampshire.

In 2008, Hillary still managed to win big in New Hampshire against Barack Obama after he upended her in the polls. In that campaign, the Granite State proved her firewall that enabled her to stay in the hotly contested race for months.

This time, Hillary knows she has an uphill battle – at best – in New Hampshire which Bernie Sanders fought for as if it were his own Vermont just across the state line during his years in the Senate. Iowa was to be her firewall.

But if she folds there, then she has to hold the line in South Carolina.

Currently, Hillary’s standing among African-American voters is one of her strongest assets. Her years of loyal service to the president have paid off for her in that community. Although Senator Sanders has impeccable records on key issues for Black and Hispanic Americans, he lacks the name recognition and long emotional association that Hillary enjoys in both communities.

So if Hillary wins in South Carolina, she can follow that up with a sweep across the South and West.

Except…

For Setback Number Three.

MoveOn.org — which picked Barack Obama for President in 2008 — has cold shouldered Hillary again.

On Tuesday it chose Bernie instead.

And that is HUGE.

Bernie won the support of 78.4 percent of the 340,000 MoveOn members who came out to vote. Hillary won only a derisory 14.6 percent.

And MoveOn is one of the crucial bell-weathers of white middle class liberal opinion across America.

Not only did the MoveOn voters support Bernie – they were highly enthusiastic for him.

Total voter turn-out for the group was far higher even than it was for Obama in 2008. And although Obama swept the MoveOn voters too, his landslide was 70 percent of the total vote. Bernie has now surpassed that.

Can Hillary fight back and still win the nomination she was supposed to have a 100 percent lock on? Certainly: She at least proved in 2008 she was a tough fighter and Bernie Sanders remains very much the underdog.

But that MoveOn vote and endorsement still has a solemn Book of Daniel Writing on the Wall message for Hillary.

The liberal backbone of the Democratic Party that propelled Barack Obama into the Presidency seven years ago has passed its verdict on her.

Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.