Having used my Sunday column to double down on one 2016 prediction — that Hillary’s still a mortal lock to be the Democratic nominee — let me use this post to quickly hedge a more recent bet: Namely, that the rise of Donald Trump might be a much-needed gift to Jeb Bush’s struggling “frontrunner” campaign. I offered various arguments three weeks ago for why this might be so, and most of them might yet be vindicated once we leave the preliminary phase of the campaign, Jeb starts spending ad dollars in earnest, the establishment field gets winnowed and voters get serious about the nominating process. But here’s one passage from my column that I want to revisit, because I’m not sure the first debate was kind to it:

[Trump’s] sudden prominence sets up exactly the kind of stylistic contrast that Jeb needed: He and the Donald are now the two most famous names in the race, they’re occupying opposing poles (populist/establishment, raffish/respectable) in a way that makes Jeb look like the safest harbor for anyone freaked out by Trump’s success …