Lessons to be learned so far in political punditry 2016:

1. The impossible can become the inevitable. Everyone, and I mean everyone, said when Donald Trump announced he was a joke and his candidacy was doomed. His candidacy now is the talk of politics worldwide in 2016. For better or worse.
2. Conventional wisdom is conventional. Conventional wisdom (CW) took a major hit. Of course, CW looks backward not forward. It reviews past voting trends and lays them over the future. Used to work. No more. Bernie Sanders was an issue candidacy but he caught fire. Trump was a joke. No more. Even after a big stumble in Iowa. And even after realizing he didn’t understand the rules of the GOP nominating process. He just keeps winning.
3. A huge GOP field is blocking the true numbers. Not true either. Since the field has winnowed to three, Trump’s margins become greater, not smaller.
4. Gaffes hurt candidates. Not Trump, for sure. He is Mr. Gaffe. Mr. Say The First Thing That Comes to Mind and never apologize.  And none of it has hurt him. At all. Ever.
   
5. Polls rule campaigns. Well, unless we learn at some point that Trump’s campaign really was spending money on polling but not listing it on their disclosure forms, the Trump Campaign seems to be running on instinct, not data. And it’s winning.
   

What do those lessons mean for the general campaign, assuming Trump does win the nomination (which is looking more likely by the day) and assuming CW holds true, which it hasn't, this year:

• Hillary will romp. Yes, that’s CW and that’s what the polls say versus Donald Trump, but please see lessons number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 when it comes to Trump. Toss the rule book out the window.
• Women will save Hillary. We’ll see. Eight years ago, for sure. Today, the “woman thing” doesn’t seem to be The Most Important Issue to Women. But versus Trump? It’s hard to explain why any woman would support him based on his rhetoric on the trail. But he is getting votes from women.
• Trump can’t steamroll Hillary. I don’t think so either. She’s smart. She’s tough. She’s been through the mill. But she hasn’t come up against anyone who will say anything and do anything. He calls her “crooked Hillary.” There’s no evidence that’s she’s “crooked” but it feeds the view of a lot of the Republican Party. They already believe that. He’s just giving it voice, true or not.
  
• The establishment will abandon Trump. Not from what we’re seeing so far. If I were a potential VP candidate and Trump offered it to me, I’d turn it down. But I have a feeling there are many “legitimate” potentials who will gladly accept it. And, I have a feeling we’ll start to see more “establishment” folks endorsing Trump in the weeks ahead. Not because they support him, but because they are Republicans and because they like to be with a “winner.”
  
• Trump is funding his own campaign. Well, he’s lending his campaign a lot of money but when the general election rolls around, my guess is he will start taking in more money from folks not named Donald Trump.

This is an amazing and unbelievable political year. It has altered the boundaries for presidential politics. Well, at least for Donald Trump. Will those boundaries remain changed in future cycles? The CW would say no. But the CW has been consistently wrong this year.

If Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, as Carly Fiorina says, are “fighting for the soul of the Republican Party,” sign me up for the Aretha Franklin for President Campaign. First, neither of them has a bit of soul. Second, neither of them has a true vision for the party or the country other than they should lead them.

As Trump takes his impossible quest for the nomination to probable, he laid out his foreign policy “vision” yesterday and, while I am no expert in foreign policy, I can pretty much see the contradictions in many of his points. For example he’s going to reduce our $19 trillion deficit in eight years but he’s going to “rebuild” our military. Trump, like others, cites the diminution in the numbers of ships and other hardware without acknowledging that war has changed and we don’t need as many battleships as we used to. Wars are fought on a different level with different weapons these days. And how can you reduce our deficit to zero in eight years yet spend billions on the military? Where do you cut?

Or, he’s going to prove to the world that America can be a trusted friend but he is going to bail on international alliances if certain countries don’t belly up to the bar with their fair share of the funding. Now that's a trustworthy ally. And a short-sighted one because those alliances not only protect our partners in the alliances, they protect us too.

Donald, this is not a real estate negotiation. There are intricate and complicated issues intertwined in international politics and diplomacy. Success is not measured in dollars and cents. It’s measured in good sense and judgement and positive results. And security.

Trump oversimplifies issues so they are understandable to the folks who support him but he isn’t telling it like it is (as they think) because it is not about laying out a smarter political position to win support. It’s about laying out a position to win support to move the country and world forward, not backward. That is a far higher standard than the calculations Trump makes.

Donald Trump being on the brink of the GOP nomination is frightening, but it is reality. His only true opposition is Ted Cruz who, in another demonstration of his judgement yesterday not only named a vice presidential candidate as his candidacy is falling into the abyss, but named Carly Fiorina who’s only success so far at elective politics is getting off a good line in a presidential debate. She lost her bid for the Senate in California, a state Cruz apparently thinks she can help him in. Repeat: she lost her Senate bid…in California. And she won one delegate during her presidential bid. One.

The Republican Party truly is in disarray when these are the final two battling for the party’s presidential nomination.  Cruz’ only chance is to keep Trump from a first-ballot victory so Cruz can, maybe, pull off the nomination in later ballots. And poor John Kasich, a capable guy, is the third man on the date, fighting for a chance to maybe pull off the nomination on the 8th ballot at the convention. Lord save me. But, truth be told, I’m glad he’s holding on for dear life because at least he gives me hope in the immediate future of the party. At least he is a voice of reason. Albeit it barely heard voice.

As theWashington Post points out this morning -  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-republicans-still-must-not-rally-around-trump/2016/04/27/432f1aca-0c96-11e6-8ab8-9ad050f76d7d_story.html - keeping Trump from the nomination and, lacking that, from the Oval Office is a moral obligation for the Republican Party. He is not qualified to work on the White House staff, let alone lead the country. He knows nothing of governance; nothing of diplomacy; nothing about the ins and outs of what a government’s job is or how it operates. He has little respect for the Constitution, saying he will change free press freedoms to better suit his tastes. 

It is not a business, Donald. You can’t run it like you would your real estate operations. The “deal” isn’t the only thing at stake – lives are – and I’ve yet to hear you factor that into your equations. I hear about dollars but not about people. That's one thing that makes the job of governing difficult -- you need to provide services and protections and manage a budget. Far more complicated with far greater responsibilities and consequences than if you fail in a real estate deal.

How will you make the lives of Americans and the tranquility of the world better other they saying “believe me, I’m the only one who can do it.” I don’t believe you. I need to be shown how you plan to do it. I do not trust that you have the expertise, experience, compassion or skills to do it. You have to prove it to me. You haven’t even come close so far. 

Your best argument against Hillary Clinton is that she’s “playing the woman’s card,” whatever that is. Are you playing the “man’s card,” whatever that is?

One challenge with democracy is you have to vote for the choices you’re given. Looks like our choices will be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Not my first two choices to lead the country. But, as the Post said, out of moral duty, it cannot be Donald Trump who thinks the most powerful person in the world is akin to being the most powerful person on a reality TV show.

Reality has to settle in at some point.

I’m upset at folks who have never really engaged in the political process (meaning at the party level) who, now that they  feel they have a stake in it through the affection they have for a particular candidate (be that Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders) yell that the process is rigged.

 I wish with my limited skills at poker, I could enter the world championship of poker and win its millions in prize money because I could alter the rules when I held what normally would be a losing hand but now I can make it a winning hand!

Ah, to live in fantasy-land. Or the netherworld of “reality” TV.

Back to politics – how is any of what I said about poker different from the political process? There are rules. Some are arcane. Some are ridiculous. But they are there for a reason – now that could be a diabolical reason but the rules were established through a process. A process led by people from the local to the national level who chose to spend some of their time involved with a political party. There aren’t one or two people pulling the strings, as some candidates would have you believe. This is a process built up over decades by hundreds of people in all 50 states. Each state sets its own rules. Should someone be able to ride in and say those rules are unfair and I want them changed now because I can’t win with these rules?

And, it’s true on both sides. Donald Trump, who is barely a Republican and has only been involved the last few years as he planned his run for president (and yes he did plan it, it didn’t come to him one day in a vision) – wins and he’s happy with the rules. Loses and the system is stacked against him. These rules have been in place long before a candidacy was a glimmer in his eye.

Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He is an Independent. Yes, he caucuses with the Democrats, but he hasn’t been a worker in the party and has not lived by the party ideology, except on the leftist edge of it. Honestly, I didn’t know you could be an Independent and run for a party’s nomination. Can a Republican seek the Democratic nomination and vice versa? I know they’d have no chance but I assume it’s within the rules to do that? Seems silly, no? All these Bernie voters who aren’t true Democrats and they want to determine the party’s nominee?

Trump could just as easily have run as a Democrat but I think he sized up the two parties and figured he had a better chance to dominate the coverage on the GOP side. Would he dominate if his immediate opponent was Hillary?  He is the diabolical one.

I’m a Republican. I started out as a Democrat many years ago because I did not like the mayor of my home town. Since whoever won the Democratic nomination in those days won the election because Democrats outnumbered Republicans by far, I chose to register as a Democrat to vote against him twice – once in the primary and again in the general. I then turned independent because I became a journalist and believe that is the appropriate choice for a journalist to be objective.

I didn’t register as a Republican until about two years into my service in Ronald Reagan’s administration, figuring I did support him and it wasn’t fair that I wasn’t registered in the party.

I'm very happy that so many people, young and old, have gotten involved in this election and I hope their interest continues, no matter how the election comes out.

But you can’t just walk into a game and not know the rules, arcane as they may be. Tell the truth, I don’t even agree with independents being able to register, in some states, on the day of the primary to potentially alter the choice of years-long party members. Why? Parties are not the government, there to ensure justice for all. They have a point of view and if you don’t like their point of view you should join and do something about it.

I was going to post about Wisconsin, and where the GOP primary goes from here – but let’s save that for another day.

As I watched my Facebook feed today, others are starting to post headlines from New York like the one here. So, let’s just, instead of having angst over who’s up and who’s down and what outlandish thing Donald Trump has said or Twitter-ed, just sit back and enjoy the next almost two weeks and what an active primary in New York can provide for entertainment.

Trump will be (even more) unleashed because in New York City anything goes, so he can mock his opponents with even more abandon, even though that may conflict with his need to be more “presidential” as he tries to wrap up the nomination or ease the minds of the 80 percent or so of the voters who are scared to death what he might do as president.

For example, when Sarah Palin endorsed Trump back in January, the Daily News  ran a picture of the two of them and the headline Intimating Palin saying, “I’m With Stupid.” Or also in January when Ted Cruz accused Trump of having “New York values” and the News ran with “Drop Dead Ted” with the subhead, hinting at Trump’s allegation that Cruz was born in Canada and thus not a U.S. Citizen, “Hey Cruz, you don’t like N.Y. values? Go back to  Canada.”

Or when Trump lost his fist caucus ever in Iowa and the News ran a mock-up of Trump in sad clown face with the headline, “Dead Clown Walking” only to follow up a week later when Trump won New Hampshire with Trump in smiling clown face and the headline, “Dawn of the Brain Dead” and the subhead “Clown comes back to life with N.H. win as mindless zombies turn out in droves.”

Finally, a newspaper worthy of covering the Trump campaign.

When I come across folks who are supporting Donald Trump and ask them why, to a person they say it’s because he “tells it like it is.”  Fact is, proven by fact-checkers over these many months, Trump tells it like it is in the Bizarro world he lives in: if he believes it’s true, it is true. Problem is, it isn’t true

Let me give a couple of examples. He suggested that if he’s President, the Supreme Court will look into Hillary Clinton’s email problems. The Supreme Court. In Bizarro Trump World (BTW) the Supreme Court undertakes such investigations. In our world, governed by the U.S. Constitution, that’s not the Court’s job, nor should it be. Nor does the court take orders from the President. It’s called separation of powers.

What the rest of the world sees on the tape is Trump’s campaign manager assaulting a reporter. In BTW,  Trump sees nothing. His campaign manager was not grabbing her arm. While the rest of us see a fresh imprint of fingers on the reporter’s arms, Trump says he doesn’t know where those came from, they could have been caused at any time, he says, despite the video and eye witnesses saying they watched the battery take place. While the cops saw a crime on the videotape, Trump sees nothing on the tape but the reporter wielding her ball point pen which, he says, could have been a weapon for all he saw.

In BTW, Trump cannot release his taxes because the IRS is auditing him. But nothing prohibits him releasing them, especially since the IRS says its audits of Trump are complete through 2008.

Trump tells it not like it is, but as he sees the world. In BTW.

In BTW Trump apparently sees himself as a president who can follow a Bill of Wrongs, instead of the Bill of Rights. He can change the libel laws. He can build a wall and “make Mexico pay for it.” He can levy a 40 percent tax on China’s exports. Fact is, Trump can’t do any of that. And he never says that he’ll propose laws to do that – which the Congress gets a say in – he says he’ll do it. By executive order, I'm guessing, if he even knows what an executive order is.  If some folks are perturbed by the steps President Obama takes in executive orders, wait until they see what Trump would do. From what he says, he would run the country by fiat – by order of the King.

Trump displays an incredible lack of knowledge or even awareness of how our government works and that the president is not a king. Maybe in his various companies -- the ones that haven't gone bankrupt -- he rules the roost in such a way. He can manage his companies any way he chooses to, that's private enterprise. In the Oval Office, it wojuld be Bizarro Trump World.

It took Donald Trump to figure out the only person in the country who might be able to defeat Donald Trump. And that person is, Donald Trump.

All his mistakes, failures to apologize, bombast, manly proclamations, insults to women, Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, Jews and others alone didn’t do it. But the weight of it all of it is adding up.

Trump had a very bad week. He was pressed on a subject he clearly knows little about (well, one of the subjects he knows little about) – abortion On a 50-50 issue, he succeeded in getting about 90 percent of the population against him. He was asked if abortion is outlawed and a woman had one, should she be put in jail for breaking the law. Absolutely, he said, clearly taking a shot that was the right-wing answer.

But it’s a view with which neither the left nor the right wings agree. For the first time in his campaign, Trump recanted within hours. It was what, for Trump, passes as admitting a mistake. That on top of his horrible approval rating with women – who make up more than half the voting population – brings his total women's support to, at my estimation – two, his wife and his daughter. And if you think I’m exaggerating, we’ll never know – because I’m sure if asked his daughter and wife will say they are voting for him, even if they’re not.

Within a couple of days he was in D.C. meeting with the GOP national chairman, supposedly trying to make nice as he, finally, realizes (this is my assumption, nothing he has said) that if/when he doesn’t win enough delegates to claim a first-ballot nomination, he’s in deep trouble. Ted Cruz, reports have it, is, as expected, getting folks supportive to him. That's because delegates are pledged to a candidate only on the first ballot. After filling their obligation on that first ballot (based on how their state's primary or caucus went, they are free to vote for anyone they choose. Anyone.

Bombast doesn’t win among those people, loyalty – to either the candidate or the party – wins.
Which brings us to Trump’s loyalty. He demonstrated this week that he is loyal to his campaign manager who was charged for manhandling a female reporter who had the audacity to ask Trump a question AFTER a 45-minute press conference. She was armed, it must be noted, with a ball point pen that was in full view so Trump later said she was a danger to his safety.

He showed he is not true to his word because he said he no longer was going to keep his pledge to support whomever the GOP nominee is. Why? Because the party hasn’t been “nice” to him. You see, Trump is finally recognizing, I think, that nice doesn’t win in politics. But understanding the rules and following them does. Trump reportedly is losing so far to Ted Cruz in the choosing-the-delegates contest. His cries that if he is the leader after the primaries are over, he should win whether he wins 50 percent of the delegates plus one (which is the rule).  Not the way it works Mr. Trump. The delegates decide, and you need to be able to have delegates elected who will be loyal to you. Clearly, Trump has a problem understanding the word loyalty. And while he is scrambling to get good staff who understand the party's rules, he is late to that game.

So, while he still could be the nominee, I’m sticking to my guns and continuing to say he will not be. If he can’t win on the first ballot, I don’t think he wins. And, if he can’t be loyal to the party whose nomination he seeks, I don’t think he can win.