The Clinton campaign is taking this seriously, and is in the process of elaborating an aggressive defense:

Clinton’s allies believe that Trump is intentionally zeroing in on a character trait that they see as her key strength — her work ethic. They think the Republican front-runner is trying to neutralize that strength and turn it into a weakness, with insinuations about Clinton’s health, fatigue level and even her appearance. To stop Trump, the campaign and Clinton’s network of supporters have begun planning a swift and aggressive response, they say…. Adding to the challenge is a long-standing conservative narrative about Clinton’s health and stamina that began with her high-profile illness and fall in 2012, which left her with a concussion, at the close of her tenure as secretary of state. Clinton has fueled that narrative, even among some of her own supporters, with a series of stumbles that aides have attributed to the normal fatigue of a vigorous campaigner. But these aides vehemently deny that there is any underlying stamina problem for Clinton — and in fact, they say that nothing could be further from the truth. They also say the accusation is sexist. They hope that, given Trump’s mounting troubles in the GOP-nominating contest, the time is right for an effective counterpunch…. Clinton’s aides, who are well into their preparations for a possible general-election matchup against Trump, have begun executing a strategy to counter Trump’s pattern of personal insults by “going big” on policy and substance — and also by being unshy about noting her penchant for marathon work days.

My prediction is that Trump’s strategy against Clinton will amount to a whole lot more than this, but it is likely to play a key role. So, a few points about it. First, Trump already starts out at a major disadvantage when it comes to public perceptions of both of their temperaments. A recent Monmouth poll found that registered voters nationally say by 68-27 that Trump does not have the “right temperament to be president,” while Clinton does by 54-42. More than two in three Americans don’t think he’s temperamentally suited to the job.

Meanwhile, a recent CNN poll found that the two are tied on who is a “strong and decisive leader,” but also that Americans think Clinton is more suited to handling the “responsibilities of commander in chief” by a wide margin of 55-36. Raw perceptions of “strength” are a wash, and at any rate, the fact that they are tied on that trait alone actually doesn’t have any bearing on who is perceived to have commander in chief qualities, where she leads big.

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Second, Trump is in a bit of a bind here. Given the disadvantages he begins with on perceptions of whether he is temperamentally fit to be president, anything he says and does to attack her as old or low energy risks further undermining him on that front. It could also exacerbate what is already expected to be a historic gender gap.

Third — and there’s no polite way to say this, so here goes — Trump is likely to find that acting like a full-blown jackass does not work nearly as well with a general election audience as it has among GOP primary voters. Trump may have persuaded a lot of those voters that he is “strong” by vanquishing his rivals with schoolyard-level alpha displays, preening antics, and hallucinogenic proposals for mass deportations and Muslim bans. But the general election audience — particularly voters in the Dem coalition of minorities, young voters, single women, and college educated whites, especially females — may be more receptive to the argument that Trump’s cartoonishly simplistic displays of “strength,” if anything, render him unfit for the presidency in a complicated world, rather than the other way around.

Now, obviously Trump has already shown he can succeed by breaking all the old rules, and his sheer unpredictability means Dems should be prepared for pretty much anything. They may need a good answer to the “incompetence” charge, depending on what is eventually revealed about her emails. Also, Trump is likely to wage attacks beyond these that could conceivably have some real bite: he’s likely to argue that she’s a stooge of Wall Street and is part of the very same establishment that has sold out American workers for decades, while he is beholden to no one. Dems need to be ready for that. But there’s no reason to be overly worried about Trump’s insult machine, no matter how effective it has been in cutting down his GOP rivals before an easier audience.

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* REPUBLICANS PREPARE TO RUN AWAY FROM TRUMP: A Trump nomination could put GOP control of the Senate at risk. But Alex Roarty reports that Republicans are working up a strategy to insulate vulnerable GOP incumbents:

Convincing someone who votes for Clinton to back a Republican senator isn’t easy….But Republicans believe they have the right combination of tools, message and environment to widen the gap this year….Trump’s reality TV star profile and well-known breaks from party orthodoxy give candidates a bigger-than-usual opening to separate from him. Clinton’s own deep unpopularity…lets them make the case that even if they don’t want Trump to be president, they shouldn’t give the former secretary of state control of Congress.

Working against this: Ticket-splitting has declined with the rise of “negative partisanship,” and Senators who were elected amid the 2010 Tea Party wave are now battling a presidential year electorate — many in states carried by Obama.

* BERNIE HOLDS SLIGHT LEAD IN WISCONSIN: A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds Bernie Sanders slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton among likely Dem voters in Wisconsin, 49-47. The polling averages puts Bernie up four. Per CBS:

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Wisconsin Democrats by a wide margin would like to see the next president follow more progressive policies than President Obama, and are more inclined to believe that trade takes away U.S. jobs, both sentiments that appear to be helping Sanders, even as he trails Clinton on the measure of being prepared to be president.

Meanwhile, the CBS poll also finds Clinton leads Sanders by 53-43 in New York (corrected). While Sanders has to win Wisconsin, Clinton merely has to keep it close, to keep him from cutting into her delegate lead. He’d then have to go on and win big in a number of other states.

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* TED CRUZ LEADS IN WISCONSIN: The new CBS poll also finds that Ted Cruz leads by 43-37 in Wisconsin. This is a must-win for the Stop Trump forces, and it looks like they might get one: the polling averages put Cruz up by just under five points.

However, the CBS poll also finds that Trump leads Cruz by 52-31 in New York and by 47-29 in Pennsylvania, another sign that the coming terrain looks very good for Trump and still holding out the possibility that he can win the nomination outright with no contested convention.

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* WISCONSIN WIN WOULD GIVE CRUZ BIG BOOST: The Post explains what a victory in Wisconsin would mean for the Texas Senator:

Cruz’s allies hope a win in Wisconsin could transform the way the Texan’s candidacy is viewed nationally. “This is a signature win in a blue-collar state . . . that’s outside of the South and the West,” said Keith Gilkes, a longtime Walker adviser. “It demonstrates his ability to coalesce a bigger, broader coalition. That’s the first time he’s done that.”

In other words, the Cruz camp knows the terrain after Wisconsin favors Trump, but hopes to convert him into a truly national candidate in the eyes of northeastern GOP voters there.

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* DEMS’ NEXT MOVES IN SUPREME COURT BATTLE: The New York Times games out what is next from the push to get Republicans to consider (and confirm) Merrick Garland:

16 Republican senators have said they are willing to at least meet with him in person. Mr. Obama’s advisers and his allies on Capitol Hill view that as an early victory….Mr. Obama will spend the late spring and summer daring Republicans in speeches, interviews and other public events to block a hearing, aides said. If Republicans relent and hold a hearing, “phase three” will be an all-out public relations campaign aimed at demanding a final, up-or-down vote on Judge Garland.

Every tiny incremental gain opens the way for more incremental gains. And if Republicans don’t break, the goal is to extract as much political pain as possible along the way, particularly when it comes to winning back the Senate.

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* A SURPRISE ENDING AT A CONTESTED CONVENTION? E.J. Dionne theorizes that, if Trump does implode after Wisconsin, that could give Republicans a way to nominate an unexpected figure:

An utter Trump implosion might free the Cleveland convention to turn to someone entirely outside the current crop of candidates, someone unsullied by the ugly and vulgar GOP primary campaign. A sinking Trump would have far less power to resist such an outcome. Democrats need to prepare now for the strong possibility that they will not be lucky enough to run against The Donald.

Cruz and Kasich, of course, would vigorously resist such an outcome, leading to still more division and chaos, but you can see why GOP elders might prefer, say, Paul Ryan to Cruz.

* AND TRUMP KEEPS ALIVE THREAT TO SPLIT GOP: Trump, on CBS’s Face the Nation, was asked again whether he’d honor that pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee, if it isn’t him. His answer:

“I will tell you when we meet at the convention. We will see how we’re treated. I want to see how we’re treated….People don’t like a lot of the things that I’m doing. But you know who does like it? People that are voting. And people are coming from Democrat, and people are coming from independent, and you know who is coming unbelievably? People that never, ever voted before.”

And so Trump is laying the groundwork to argue that not only was he treated unfairly (which he reserves the right to define), but also that supporting the nominee (should he have received fewer votes) will disenfranchise his own huge, great, and terrific following.