So where does the campaign go from here? Hard to believe that it is the Republicans who appear to have picked their candidate before the Democrats. I mean, who could have seen that happening? But this is what happens when you have an old, worn-out retread like Hillary Clinton revealing yet again just how abysmal a candidate she really is. This is what happens when you have someone running not on their merits, but due to some perceived entitlement that it’s “her turn”, and to hell with the voters.

As I’ve said before, I still don’t see Hillary making it to the Democratic convention. There’s still the e-mail scandal lurking out there, and you just know behind the scenes there’s the fear that between the “High Energy Shock and Awe” strategy that Trump has used against a t-o-u-g-h tough Republican field and establishment that repeatedly and continually pounded him with hundreds of millions of dollars of negative ads and cable news vitriol, and Hillary’s inherent unlikeability as a candidate, that Trump will beat her like a rented mule once it becomes mano a mano.

Oh sure, all you’ll get between now and November from the cable news networks are the polls that say Clinton beats Trump, and in some cases handily. But I would caution taking those seriously, for two reasons: One, Trump has, virtually from the beginning, outperformed virtually every poll that has been taken, and over the past month, outperformed the most recent primary state polling by nearly double-digits. Which tells me there is an undercurrent of Trump support that continues to go unnoticed by the polling organizations. Two, Trump will be running against Hillary not as a Republican (that’s obvious, right?), but as a populist. And if Hillary gets the nomination I think you’re going to see significant crossover from the Bernie Sanders crowd simply on the basis of Trump being perceived as an outsider.

Finally, let me tell you a little story that may be anecdotal, may be significant. Last week, while back in Massachusetts – as blue a blue state as there is – I’m having a nitecap at the Chinese restaurant down the street from where my folks live. The bar at the Wu Loon Ming is a real townie joint, frequented by blue-collar guys and locals where the conversation drifts between the local sports teams and the typical comings and goings among the regulars. The night I was there one of the TVs was on CNN, and there’s something being shown about Trump, and the guy sitting next to me asks me if I’m for Trump. “Absolutely”, says I, “and I don’t care what anyone thinks”. An older guy the next seat down says he’s for Trump as well, but he’d never tell his wife. And one by one the others in the bar all say something similar – they’re for Trump but they’ll never admit that to their family and friends. This, in the bastion of Ted Kennedy liberal Massachusetts.

The reason behind this, I think, is something National Review’s Victor David Hanson wrote the other day:

To get a clearer idea of the feelings of Trump supporters, read the comments section following any mainstream news story that deals with race, class, and gender in politically correct fashion. A stream-of-consciousness litany of his supporters’ peeves, for good or ill, would run like this: The wrong people are in the news. Instead of generals, and small-business owners, and muscular workers, we instead see smarmy smart-asses, the pajama boys and mattress girls of the world of TV, who roll their eyes, wink about a joke only the anointed get, and smirk that what they say could have three different meanings — the Jon Stewarts, David Lettermans, and Stephen Colberts of Smug, Inc. On race, Trump supporters are tired of hearing that black lives matter, while no one mentions that all lives matter. They are sick of seeing protestors wave the flag of the country they do not wish illegal aliens to be sent back to and trash the country they under no circumstances want them to leave. They don’t like getting a letter from an IRS that employs Lois Lerner — a letter that would be ignored with impunity by those who are here illegally, or who run the Clinton Foundation. They are tired of wealthy minorities claiming they are perpetual victims of ill-treatment at the hands of people who are less well off than they. They don’t like hearing from elites that huge trade deficits have little to do with loss of jobs or that cheating by our trade partners is just a passing glitch in free trade. They cannot stand lectures from those who make more money in an hour than they do in a year about their own bad habits or slothfulness. They don’t know what the on-screen savants mean by a leg-tingle or a perfectly pressed pant leg or a first-class temperament or a president as god — and they don’t care to find out. They do not hate political correctness so much as one-sided political correctness, which gives a pass to some to say things that would get others fired or ruined. They don’t want to be lectured that their own plight is part of a larger, healthy creative destruction or a leaner, meaner competitiveness or an overdue restructuring — by those who are never destroyed, rendered noncompetitive, or restructured. And they don’t like to be talked down to by the experts who ran up $10 trillion in debt, ruined the health-care system, dismantled the military, and screwed up the Secret Service, the IRS, NASA, and the VA. Trump is their megaphone, not their solution. The Trump supporters have seen plenty of politicians with important agendas, but few with the zeal to push them through; at this late date, they would apparently prefer zeal without agendas to agendas without zeal.

To get a clearer idea of the feelings of Trump supporters, read the comments section following any mainstream news story that deals with race, class, and gender in politically correct fashion. A stream-of-consciousness litany of his supporters’ peeves, for good or ill, would run like this: The wrong people are in the news. Instead of generals, and small-business owners, and muscular workers, we instead see smarmy smart-asses, the pajama boys and mattress girls of the world of TV, who roll their eyes, wink about a joke only the anointed get, and smirk that what they say could have three different meanings — the Jon Stewarts, David Lettermans, and Stephen Colberts of Smug, Inc. On race, Trump supporters are tired of hearing that black lives matter, while no one mentions that all lives matter. They are sick of seeing protestors wave the flag of the country they do not wish illegal aliens to be sent back to and trash the country they under no circumstances want them to leave. They don’t like getting a letter from an IRS that employs Lois Lerner — a letter that would be ignored with impunity by those who are here illegally, or who run the Clinton Foundation. They are tired of wealthy minorities claiming they are perpetual victims of ill-treatment at the hands of people who are less well off than they. They don’t like hearing from elites that huge trade deficits have little to do with loss of jobs or that cheating by our trade partners is just a passing glitch in free trade. They cannot stand lectures from those who make more money in an hour than they do in a year about their own bad habits or slothfulness. They don’t know what the on-screen savants mean by a leg-tingle or a perfectly pressed pant leg or a first-class temperament or a president as god — and they don’t care to find out. They do not hate political correctness so much as one-sided political correctness, which gives a pass to some to say things that would get others fired or ruined. They don’t want to be lectured that their own plight is part of a larger, healthy creative destruction or a leaner, meaner competitiveness or an overdue restructuring — by those who are never destroyed, rendered noncompetitive, or restructured. And they don’t like to be talked down to by the experts who ran up $10 trillion in debt, ruined the health-care system, dismantled the military, and screwed up the Secret Service, the IRS, NASA, and the VA. Trump is their megaphone, not their solution. The Trump supporters have seen plenty of politicians with important agendas, but few with the zeal to push them through; at this late date, they would apparently prefer zeal without agendas to agendas without zeal.

Trump has no loyalty to the Republican establishment or to the conservative movement. The apparent greatest attraction for his supporters is that he drives crazy those who worship Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And if the Republican establishment implodes with the Obamism it did not stop, well, so goes collateral damage — and in the process, woe to us all.

Virtually everyone, including Ted Cruz and his supporters, downplayed and underestimated Donald Trump’s candidacy from the very beginning, figuring that Trump’s unwillingness to play the political game would come back to haunt him in the end. And if Trump himself didn’t self-destruct, the media would destroy him for them. Instead, Trump beat the media at their own game, and as a result has seemingly inoculated himself from virtually – emphasis on virtually – anything the media and the Clinton machine and their powerful allies in the media can dig up on him between now and November. But it won’t be for a lack of trying, that’s for sure.

And perhaps Trump ultimately will find a way to self-destruct, but I highly doubt it. Trump may say politics is a new game for him, but he’s been playing it for decades, just as a businessman. More than anything else, Trump is a master at the game of winning, and Americans, as no less an authority than General George S. Patton once said, love a winner. And I’m inclined to believe the general.

One can only hope that Madame Hillary and the Democrats will continue to underestimate the power of Trump.