The announcement that Donald Trump has become the presumptive Republican candidate for president following his resounding victory in Indiana’s primary is being met with amused approval in—of all places—Mexico City. Forget the man in the street in Mexico City selling a Donald Trump piñata. Despite official protestations to his anti-Mexican rhetoric, Mexico’s elite may actually favor Trump.

The aim was to embarrass and discredit her not because of her alleged missteps as Secretary of State, but as a 2016 presidential candidate. Republicans got what they wanted when their phony accusations against her of cover-up and incompetence got tons of media chatter and focus and raised the first shadow of public doubt. The doubt quickly ballooned into the image of Clinton in the mind of many as a shifty-eyed and shifty-talking candidate who every time she opened her mouth grew a Pinocchio-length nose. 

Bernie Sanders has gone from a charming, engaging, provoking, and supremely principled Democratic presidential candidate to a scheming, conniving, devious, supremely unprincipled Democratic presidential contender. In quick succession, Sanders has been accused of being a tax cheat, a special-interest money-grabber, a foreign policy dimwit, a Nixonian dirty trickster, and a racial bigot. 

Even more than Romney, Trump’s violence driven, race-baiting crusade that nakedly appeals to largely white lower-income, less educated, rural and strongly male crowds drive the point home that blacks are not even an after-thought in his drive to snare the White House. But there’s more to the picture about Trump and black voters as the punches that the black assailant delivered to the Trump protester showed.

The GOP would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism, and really meant it. The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, Obama as Joker posters, n-word slurs, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waving by some Tea Party activists, and the deafening silence from GOP leaders during Obama’s early years in office, was and still very much is an indispensable political necessity for the party.

They fear that he will actually be the party’s nominee. And if so, what will that do to the party? GOP leaders from House Majority leader Paul Ryan to Arizona Senator John McCain sweat that Trump could not only cost the GOP any shot at the White House but blow their majority hold on the Senate as well. The one thing that would almost certainly insure that is if the sentiment voiced by the conservative activist about Trump is not just a bad case of momentary blowing smoke.

Trump has now emerged as the likely Republican nominee come this fall’s election. The Republican establishment — through Super PAC's supporting Jeb Bush — burned through more than $130 million in an effort to stop Trump, yet he continues to surge in the polls. Donald Trump’s appeal, however, should not come as a surprise if it is seen in sociological terms.

The election walk-over for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is the nightmare that has haunted the GOP party leaders from the moment that Trump and Cruz declared their candidacies. Both men are the most polarizing presidential ticket candidates since Sarah Palin turned the GOP White House bid into a running Comedy Central riff. This election go-round it’s far worse than when Palin was on the ticket in 2008 and later made some soundings about a 2012 presidential bid. 

So the question that once seemed absolutely ludicrous to think let alone ask is now a question that can be seriously asked and even to an extent answered. Just how would Trump govern? There’s little reason to think Trump is suited to patient, give-and-take negotiation and compromise to get his initiatives through Congress. His style is to bellow, bully, and harangue to get his way. As for the issues, Trump has been on the political scene long enough to have enough of a paper trail to piece together from his statements in debates and interviews and speeches a fairly accurate picture of what he will say and do on the big-ticket issues. 

Put simply, Donald Trump, once the Clown Prince of American politics has become the Most Important Person of American politics today. Outrageous as he might be, he is not just setting the cat among the pigeons. He is the cat among the pigeons. He is setting the agenda and everyone else gets to react to it. As testimony to that, the Republican Party’s leaders, while trying to distance the party from Trump’s outrageousness, are nervous about going the full distance.