He used to insult many candidates, but most of them are out of the race.

He used to talk about his polls, but now he trails Hillary Clinton badly in a general-election match-up. Cruz has shrunk Trump’s lead in California to single digits. Trump cannot say “Women love me,” without facing a bevy of polls showing how unpopular he is with women.

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Trump used to talk freely about foreign policy. Since his egregious gaffes on pulling back from NATO and letting Japan and South Korea get nukes, that topic has become dicey. In fact, his policy foolery makes discussion of any issue treacherous. On health care, he is getting scorned for his “incoherent mishmash” of half-baked ideas. On entitlements, no one thinks getting rid of “waste, fraud and abuse” is going to make Social Security solvent. His idea that he will eliminate the $19 trillion debt in eight years with a tax scheme that loses $10 trillion and without touching entitlements is laughable. Now, mainstream media interviewers are challenging his preposterous ideas while transcripts of his interviews with the Post and the New York Times editorial boards generate guffaws from conservatives.

Trump’s campaign promises a series of policy speeches. The danger there, however, is that someone might ask him questions about his remarks, forcing him to explain himself. That generally has not gone well. In a prepared speech last month at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) gathering, Trump barely got through the teleprompted remarks, and no one managed to edit out a reference to “Palestine,” which Cruz pointed out does not exist.

Trump cannot talk about his ability to hire great people and his fantastic organization, given that he had to essentially demote his beleaguered campaign manager and bring in someone to try to stem the flood of delegate losses. Any effort to disguise the demotion of Corey Lewandowski vanished when Trump’s new “convention manager,” Paul Manafort, revealed that he reports directly to Trump. In fact, Trump’s business experience is no longer a great topic for him either, now that the details of Trump University and serial failures (casinos, steaks, mortgages, vodka, airlines, football, etc.) have come to light.