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Can Trump card triumph in November?
When the real estate mogul announced his White House run in June last year dramatically coming down the escalator of his Trump Tower in New York with a promise to \'Make America Great Again\' few took him seriously.
Washington: Pundits, pollsters and the President, all prophesied that Donald Trump would never be the Republican nominee.
A Washington Post columnist even promised to eat his entire column if the Manhattan mogul triumphed. And he did literally eat his words making a meal of his column after Trump became the party's presumptive nominee after a "yuge" win in Indiana. But others were not so sporting as they tied themselves into knots to explain the Trump phenomenon.
When the real estate mogul announced his White House run in June last year – dramatically coming down the escalator of his Trump Tower in New York with a promise to 'Make America Great Again' – few took him seriously.
Pundits said he was just a clown having some fun. With less than 1 per cent support, he made just an asterisk on pollsters' charts. Columnists saw a dynastic clash between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, a former First Lady and the son of a President and brother of another, more likely.
And each time he made a controversial, 'politically incorrect" comment about Barack Obama's 2008 Republican presidential rival John McCain not being a war hero or calling illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists or criminals and proposing a temporary ban on Muslims' entry into the US, they said his candidacy would unravel.
They called him anti-immigrant, misogynist, racist and worse. Yet his numbers kept shooting up with Trump himself bragging that "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
The incredulous pundits then changed tack and said he had a low ceiling of 30-35 per cent diehard supporters and that he was tapping into voters' anger and making hay in a crowded field of 17 Republican contenders, including Indian-American Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's then Governor.
Even as Governors, Senators and other high profile candidates kept falling "boom, boom" in Trump's words, the establishment tenuously hung on to hopes of dislodging him at a contested Republican convention in July, suggesting that he would never reach the magic figure of 1,237 to win the party nomination outright.
So 'Lyin' Ted' Cruz, establishment's bugaboo-turned-darling, and "1 in 41" John Kasich, whom the polls inexplicably showed as the only Republican beating Hillary Clinton in November, kept at it until they finally saw the writing on the wall in Indiana. Poll watchers and pundits who have witnessed the rise and rise of the billionaire suggested that the presidential election was a whole new ball game and Trump magic may not work against the well-oiled billion dollar Clinton machine in November.
But few are willing to place a bet this time, lest they may have to eat their words again!
Arun Kumar
