Electoral battles

Despite All the Slime and Party Traitors, Donald Trump Still Has a Chance

Donald Trump is still in this race, and he can still win it.

Obviously, he has had a rough couple of weeks. Democrats and the Clinton campaign — by which I mean the media — have thrown more slime and dirt at the Republican presidential nominee than any other politician in the history of television.

Yet, Mr. Trump is still standing.

Down in the polls, perhaps. But nowhere near where a lesser candidate or a weaker man would be if he had endured all that Mr. Trump has.

The first 10 minutes of the last debate in St. Louis, where Mr. Trump stood on the stage against the entire world and stared it down and then began prosecuting the case against Hillary Clinton, was the greatest herculean effort successfully pulled off by any man in modern politics.

His resilience is a testament to his own political instincts, his own willingness to take creative risks and his own monster stamina. It is also a testament to how desperately people believe in the political message that he alone identified and has forcefully pursued against a hurricane of universal opposition among elites.

Nowhere is that opposition hotter and more strident than from fellow Republicans, who excoriated Mr. Trump early in the primary campaign when he initially balked at agreeing to support the eventual nominee.