At his last and final White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Obama quipped that “the end of the republic never looked better.” With Trump officially named as the Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton beginning to steadily lose ground to him in national polls, it is time for millions of Americans to emerge from their nearly year-long state of denial and face the reality that Trump may very well be the 45th President of the United States. To be sure, a lot can and will happen between now and November; however, to still think that a Trump defeat is a forgone conclusion is not only overly optimistic, but plays into the hands of Trump’s presidential bid, which has from the beginning never failed to capitalize on its success in defying expectations. The truth is that Trump’s campaign has been – sorry to say – nothing short of historic. Regardless of what happens in November, his run for the White House laid bare the limitations (or even irrelevance) of Washington’s once highly esteemed class of campaign advisors; the culpability of the media in its gluttonous coverage of Trump, which gave his campaign more exposure than all the other Republican nominees put…
