What would be more damaging for the United States? Electing a president in the wake of an 11th hour revelation about his opponent? Or electing a president who's subsequently hit with a revelation that would have cost her the election had it arrived sooner?
As readers know, I think that Donald Trump, who has squandered inherent advantages over Hillary Clinton through his own erratic, self-indulgently self-destructive behavior, needs another revelatory domino to fall over in order to end up in the White House. Probably. Assuming that most of the polls are not under-counting his strength due to his latter-day pariah status in the mainstream media, a pariah status far greater than the act of supporting Brexit.
That dog of revelation hasn't barked yet. What might such a bark herald?
Well, the discovery of deleted classified e-mails on ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop, giving the lie to Hillary's line of defense, could well do it.
So could a smoking gun about pay-for-play and the Clinton Foundation. (Some of the already leaked e-mails have been more than suggestive.)
Or maybe something else entirely, since Team Clinton was so cavalierly inept in securing her precious e-mail archives as United States secretary of state that they may as well have Fed-exed the Hillary SOS archive to the Kremlin.
Today at least, however, that front was marked by the blessed sound of silence.
So that is good for Democrats, and those few of us who have warned of Trump's ascendance for more than a year, especially as more and more votes come in by mail.
But what if I'm wrong, what if another baying hound of Clinton scandal isn't really necessary?
What if recent revelations are still percolating and a stable-for-once-for-a-week Trump is somehow reassuring?
The latest national polls have Trump within the polling margin of error. The actual moves of the nation's leading Democrats indicate very serious concern about the race. Clearly they don't buy these trendy media statistical models promising near certain victory for Hillary in a race which -- putting aside its closeness and questions about polling accuracy -- can turn in a flash on a single move either from the U.S. Justice Department or the Kremlin.
Michigan had long seemed safe for Hillary. But with her lead there collapsing in the last few days, she rushed back to the Wolverine State on Friday to try to reassert her edge.
She was also in Ohio, pushing to turn out the base vote in a tough race with Trump. And she was in Pennsylvania, a state also long thought a lock for Hillary, suddenly pushing in the Pittsburgh area, where I'm told Trump has recently surged dramatically into the lead.
And President Barack Obama, who just three days ago was scheduled to campaign in North Carolina, which he carried in both 2008 and 2012, only on Wednesday, likewise suddenly returned to the Tar Heel State on Friday. The usually imperturbable president looked more ruffled than usual, actually losing his temper when some of the audience wouldn't stop heckling an older veteran protesting for Trump.
Obviously, tensions remain high.
It was only Wednesday when Obama, during his scheduled stint of campaigning in North Carolina, portentously declared: "The fate of the world is teetering and you, North Carolina, are going to have to make sure that we push it in the right direction."
Guess it needed another big push.
So the Wikileaks watch continues. Julian Assange stated in September that he would release material which would result in the indictment of Hillary Clinton. But I think his hands are not entirely his own. There is probably a bigger and much more long-term agenda at play than Assange's resentment at what he sees as Clinton's persecution of him for the embarrassing release of State Department cables several years back.
And furious bureaucratic maneuvering is undoubtedly underway amidst angry FBI agents, their compromised and compromising managers, and the defensive Justice Department appointees who oversee them all.
Is there something truly lethal there, and might it see the light of day in time to turn the election?
The good thing for Democrats, and those of us who have long been deeply alarmed by the prospect of a President Trump, is that the later it gets now, the harder it will be to influence the largest number of voters.
Of course, the flip side of that is the later it gets, the more difficult it is to mount a successful counter.