Boy, was I wrong about Trump’s candidacy

In September, I wrote this: “Supposedly we are entering the twilight of Trump.”

Trudging fearlessly on, I wrote: “... It’s over. Republican voters are ready for someone, something new. They were never really serious about nominating Trump. It was just a flirtation.”

At least I had the sense, a few paragraphs later, to offer a caveat: “But Trump could surprise us again. Despite the fact that he doesn’t resemble a conventional candidate, he appears to have struck a real chord with Republicans, especially the party’s base.”

Well, he did surprise us. Over and over again for the next seven months.

He didn’t change his style, except, perhaps, for a modest tweak here and there. He was never afraid to be outrageous, never overly concerned with facts, never the traditional politician.

And now, with a 10-point victory over “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz in Indiana, he is the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Both Sen. Cruz and Gov. John Kasich bowed out of the race Wednesday, leaving Trump all alone.

Barring some secret plot to derail him before or during the GOP convention in Cleveland this summer, he now is free to focus on the general election and defeating Hillary Clinton, his presumptive Democratic counterpart.

As I proved back in September, I never would have predicted this. The only comfort is that I was not alone in my inability to read the tea leaves – not by a long shot.

Nobody in those early days – except maybe Trump himself – was predicting that he would be the nominee.

When Trump announced that he was running almost a year ago, his poll numbers were hovering around 1 percent – or less. The field of GOP candidates totaled 17, including sitting governors, U.S. senators and Jeb Bush, whom many thought would simply inherit the nomination.

There were so many candidates, debate sponsors had to create a “kids’ table” for the low-polling candidates who wouldn’t fit on the stage. But Trump, by the time the debates got rolling, had raised his poll numbers and was occupying center stage, where he stayed as the other candidates steadily made their exits.

At each step of the way – as Trump continued to make one outrageous statement after another, offending people left and right, peppering the other candidates with insults – pundits predicted that “this time” he had gone too far. The honeymoon was over. Voters would come to their senses. He couldn’t seriously win the nomination, could he?

And at each step of the way, they were dead wrong.

What Trump has accomplished already seems historic and important. It could even signal the demise of the Republican Party as it has existed since Richard Nixon’s presidency. It might pave the way for the creation of a viable third party.

Or it could be a singular phenomenon. Trump could go down in flames in the general election, taking vulnerable GOP senators and members of Congress down with him – after which party pooh-bahs would conclude: “Let’s not do that again!”

But who, after the Donald has been mistakenly counted down and out so many times, is willing to predict beyond a shadow of a doubt that he won’t be our next president? As frightening as that might be for many Americans, we are in a campaign in which Trump has demonstrated that anything can happen.

I would like to believe that a Trump presidency is impossible, that voters will have enough sense not to make him the leader of the free world, that when he pivots to running a national campaign designed to appeal to a broad cross-section of voters, he finally will run into the brick wall that so often has seemed to be just around the corner.

But while I expect that is what will happen, I am hedging my bets.

My next prediction regarding the presidential campaign will come just before the new president’s swearing-in ceremony.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Boy, was I wrong about Trump’s candidacy."