I stopped to get gas in Trenton on my way to the Donald Trump fund-raiser for our governor Thursday.

As I pulled up to the pump, a guy started cleaning the windshield. He told me he'd just gotten out of state prison after 24 years.

I gave him a buck for his troubles. Then I asked him what he thought of the Donald.

"I like him," he said. "He's a funny guy and he's politically incorrect."

With that glowing endorsement in mind, I drove to the Lawrenceville Armory. The usual pack of protesters were arrayed at the gate, inadvertently gaining Trump an endorsement of a different type.

The more the left-wingers protest him, the better Trump does with the right-wingers that make up the Republican base.

As for the few stragglers in the "never-Trump" movement, they are mostly confined to the pages of the Washington Post and National Review. There, they have been reduced to the status of those Japanese soldiers who held out on Pacific islands for years after World War II, unaware the war was over.

The rally itself was a neat trick. The attendees were charged at the rate of $200 for adults and $25 for students for the privilege of hearing the Donald do his stand-up routine. He was in fine fettle and all seemed satisfied as they filed out.

After I got home, I put my dog Betty in the car to take her for a walk on what is usually a deserted beach. Not this time. A bunch of young people were huddled around a "Trump for President" lawn sign stuck in the sand, drinking beer and enjoying the warm weather.

When I told them I'd just seen the great man in person, they were suitably impressed. They were big on Trump, as expected. But several told me they liked Bernie Sanders as well. The only candidate still in the running they all disliked was Hillary Clinton.

Hillary had a bad week. There were a couple of national polls showing her trailing Trump for the first time. Even worse was that dust-up over just who threw chairs at whom in a dispute between her supporters and Sanders supporters in Nevada.

And then there were the threats from Sanders supporters to disrupt the Democratic convention if their man isn't the nominee. If they take to the streets of Philadelphia this summer, the Sanders crowd could create a repeat of the chaos at the 1968 Chicago convention.

All of this has Democratic leaders calling for Sanders to admit defeat. Clinton herself took that view in an interview with Chris Cuomo of CNN Thursday.

"I will be the nominee for my party, Chris," she said. "That is already done in effect. There is no way I won't be."

Oh, yes there is, says the Sanders crowd. Neither candidate has a lock on the nomination based solely on pledged delegates. Of late Sanders has been gaining ground on Clinton in that count.

Clinton has the race locked up only if you count the more than 500 super-delegates who say they will support her. But if those super-delegates were to defect to Sanders, then he would be the candidate with the comfortable lead.

Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver is calling on the super-delegates to do just that. Democratic insiders say there's little chance of that. But it remains a possibility right up until the first ballot is taken the last week in July. That leaves plenty of room for mischief.

Contrast that with the Republican convention the prior week in Cleveland. The Republicans have fewer super-delegates. And they won't matter because Trump is unopposed in the remaining primaries and is on his way to an undisputed majority of pledged delegates.

That means there won't be mobs of Mitt Romney supporters with torches and pitchforks in the streets of Cleveland, no matter how much the Washington Post and the National Review crowd might desire it.

This is going to be a coronation. And as Trump's first major backer, Christie will be holding the crown - a point he drilled home to that audience in the armory, just in case anyone forgot.

He also reminded the crowd that Trump is a dangerous debater.

"As someone who's been on a few debate stages, I know Hillary Clinton's worst nightmare is to climb on that debate stage in September and look across at Donald Trump," he said.

First she has to get there, and it won't be easy. June 7 is now an irrelevant date for the Donald. But if Sanders could win states like California and New Jersey, then he could claim both momentum and a moral victory.

If Clinton has to rely on super-delegates for her win, the Sanders crowd likely won't take it sitting down. Whether they'll stand up and throw their chairs remains to be seen.

But a lot of Republicans are relishing the prospect of finding out.

PLUS: And then there's Hillary Clinton's vaunted foreign-policy experience. As ex-CIA agent Larry Johnson notes here, her push for intervening in Libya was the biggest screw-up of the Obama presidency.

Even Ralph Nader thinks she's dangerous anywhere near the reins of military power.

ALSO, I was discussing Hillary's chances with a few friends when we got to talking about a piece of advice she might have taken from a real political pro that would have spared her this email controversy.

That's one-time Louisiana governor Earl Long, a charmer as steeped in the art of politics as Hillary's husband.

Here was Long's advice for handling communications. It's even more important now in the age of i-phones:

"Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink."

Sage words. How did Hillary get this far in life without observing them?