It’s time to stop assuming that the Trump phenomenon will collapse under its own weight. Trump has held a continuous lead in the RCP polling average since July 20th. That’s already longer than any candidate not named Mitt Romney held the lead in 2012, and Trump’s lead is growing rather than shrinking. His main competition at this point is Ben Carson, who has neither the money nor the campaign experience to land the kind of knockout punch that will end Trump’s reign at the top of the field.

The assumption that Trump will say or do something that will alienate his supporters is also a false hope, for Trump opponents. If the unmitigated stream of gaffes, errors, offensive remarks and boorish behavior that constitute the Trump campaign hasn’t alienated his voters by now, it’s difficult to see how continued exposure to them will do the trick. Trump is what he is. More or less, everyone understands what Trump represents right now. His supporters are fine with this. They seem disinclined to go anywhere.

So here we are, Donald Trump is running away with the nomination for one of the two major political parties in this country, and what does that say about us as a people? What does it further say that attacking Trump for not knowing or understanding basic points of policy, or for making an absolute fool of himself (which he does constantly) causes him to go up in the polls rather than down?