Donald has signaled loudly and clearly that he will drop out of the presidential race if his poll numbers don't continue to soar above the mediocre crowd of candidates. He (sort of) backtracked later, but his message was unmistakably that he will take his ball and go home if too many voters polled like other kids more than him.
This will, in fact, happen. Donald doesn't like to lose, and more importantly, doesn't like to be ignored, and when his luster starts to fade, as it already has, he will return to the business of insulting Mexicans and women in the privacy of his own mansions and boardrooms.
Our reaction to this should be two things: Glee that soon enough, the Trumpian media circus will end; and anger that he will have made all of us look like fools.
When he bails, the media who initially dismissed him, and then took him far too seriously, will look bad. Those of us who watched with a combination of horror, dismay and amusement will look bad. And most of all, his followers -- whose blind devotion to this sham of a candidacy has been impossible to fathom -- will look like fools.
But first, why will Donald drop out? There's several possible reasons: 1) As mentioned, he hates being anything but the center of attention, and when he gets a whiff of the media covering other candidates, he will pout, then exit; 2) he never really wanted to be president -- and is no doubt privately amazed he has gotten this far. But the qualities it takes to run the country -- diplomacy, consensus-building, understanding issues, brains - aren't his strong suit; 3) he really has contempt for the American public, including (especially?) his supporters, and the idea of serving the public interest every day for four years doesn't really sit well with the Mar-A-Lago/Trump Tower/look down on the little people lifestyle.
Donald is an in-our-faces non-stop siege, and while that may be appealing for a short time, it wears thin pretty quickly. It already has. Most people are doubtless weary of him already, and the thought of him assaulting us with his uninformed rants for another six months, much less another several years, cannot possibly be something most people want.
Yes, he leads the weak field of Republicans, but again, at 25 percent or so of GOP voter support -- self-identified Republicans make up 40 percent of the electorate -- that's only 10 percent of the voting population. There's another 90 percent who don't want Donald and never have or will.
Since Donald has been surrounded his entire life by people who kowtow to him, any rejection of him and what he's selling will be a cold bucket of water dumped on his inflated head. But more importantly, any rejection of him will provide a convenient excuse to scurry back to the full-time exploitation of what will by then be a tarnished Trump brand.
(I worked briefly for a very wealthy man who ventured into politics after a hugely successful career on Wall Street, and the requirements of governing were not to his liking, and his ego, though large, could fit neatly into Trump's pocket.)
So when Donald tires of this presidential game, and we tire of him, what will be found in the ruins?
•A media corps that has looked utterly inept at every turn, first for writing him off, then for racing 180 degrees and covering his every absurd utterance as evidence of his appeal to an angry, disenfranchised public. The media rarely, if ever, took a reasonable middle ground.
•A general public that already viewed politics in the 21st century as some sort of combination of hunger games and egocentric reality show, and will now, in the immediate aftermath of Trump's joke of a candidacy, won't know who is real anymore. Jeb Bush has been hammered for not being exciting (i.e., Trumpian) enough. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are wacky fringe candidates. Carly Fiorina has mastered the art of turning a dismal business career into a momentarily credible political career. Chris Christie is a Trump wannabe only even less tactful and intelligent, as if that were possible. It's going to be awhile before we trust anyone running for the top job.
•And most of all, Trump's valiant, misguided supporters. What will become of them when Donald lets them down? They will be, if anything, angrier than they already are, and now Donald himself will be one source of their anger. Given their irrational defense of everything Donald says and does, perhaps they will find ways to explain away his exit from the political stage. More likely, they will become even more disenchanted. That's a scary thought.
Maybe I'm wrong and Donald will stay in this thing until he loses the nomination, loses the general election, or even -- it is possible -- becomes our 45th president. But I'm willing to go out on a limb and predict Donald is secretly hoping his poll numbers fall, so he can retreat to the much more comfortable world of private bullying, yes men, and unrepentant self-promotion in a forum where he has all the control.
Earlier on Huff/Post50: