A liberal friend is very concerned about the Republican Party. He tells me that Donald Trump will make it impossible for anybody anywhere running under the “R” column to win election. Even a dogcatcher in Podunk is doomed!

The New York Times shows a similar concern. Surely written with furrowed brow, its front page worries because “Sparring in GOP Rises” and because “Rift Grows Wide as Republicans Abandon Trump.” It joins two other concerned lefties, the Huffington Post and CNBC, in declaring that the GOP is “unraveling.”

All stand ready to help sponsor a dignified funeral, but that won’t be necessary. Their reports of the Republican Party’s death are premature. Very premature.

A new Quinnipiac poll tells the inconvenient truth. Trump and Hillary Clinton are tied in each of the three key swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

The breakdown in Florida reveals how truly close the race is. As Politico puts it, Clinton has a 13-point advantage among women, 48 percent to 35 percent, while Trump’s lead among men is also 13 points, 49 percent to 36 percent. Each gets 39 percent of independent voters, while Trump wins big among whites, and Clinton wins big among nonwhites. The candidates have identical net negative approvals of minus 20 points, 37 percent to 57 percent.

With the poll showing Bernie Sanders doing better against Trump than Clinton (and Sanders winning the West Virginia primary on Tuesday), I myself am growing concerned about the “unraveling” of the Democratic Party!

Big Media’s fixation on the defections of Big-Name Republicans is the latest proof that both groups remain stubbornly disconnected from real Americans. If Trump had been dependent on the support of Mitt Romney or Sen. Lindsey Graham or assorted pundits and donors, he never would have gotten 10 million primary votes.

He launched a rocket-fueled revolution, defeated 16 rivals and became the presumptive nominee by running against the entire national establishment, not to mention conventional wisdom and both political parties.

Now he’s doomed if Romney doesn’t back him? Nonsense.

Yet each day, the drum beats louder about a new and greater threat to GOP harmony. The current one is the insistence from everybody on the left, and a few on the right, that Trump is toast if he can’t get House Speaker Paul Ryan to endorse him.

By all means, endorsements are generally a good thing for candidates, and party unity is usually regarded as an essential starting point. But the claim that Trump must finally conform to all the traditional norms repeats the false assumptions that led the media and most Republicans to miss Trump’s astonishing appeal in the first place.

He is a phenomenon, much as Barack Obama was in 2008, and he could do to Clinton what Obama did to her then. Obama was fresh, and she was tired. Now Trump is fresh, and Clinton is even more tired.

One result is that the campaign will be fought on his turf. The issues most associated with him — immigration, terrorism, trade, jobs — dominated the GOP primaries.

Indeed, try to imagine the last year without Trump. Who would have set the GOP agenda, what issues would have led the way, and how would voters have responded? Would turnout have hit record levels when so many Republican voters feel betrayed by their own party leaders?

Trump stirred the drink from day one and the ability to set the terms of the contest is usually the hallmark of a winning campaign. That’s what he’s done so far, and that’s what he’ll try to do in the fall.

Clinton can’t let him succeed, and instead must put him on defense with nonstop attacks on his character and lack of government experience. She’s already doing that, but is paying a price with his fierce counter-punching.

Her big advantage is the Electoral College, and she will try to shut him down by relentlessly playing the women’s and racial cards. And it’s certain Trump will hand her gaffe gifts and display an embarrassing lack of detailed knowledge.

We know all that already, yet still they are tied in the states that matter most. She may win and he may lose, but neither The New York Times nor Mitt Romney will make a whit of difference.

Check out Hillary’s history of changing stances:



Blas, Cuo in summer slimeshare

The continuing blizzard of subpoenas demonstrates that New York’s twin corruption scandals are no mere spring fling. Investigations are expanding in the offices of both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo and could make for a very hot summer.

Coming after numerous lawmakers were convicted in separate cases, the probes paint the era as one of the most corrupt in history. How’s this for a slogan: More crooked than Tammany!

Things are so bad that de Blasio is using Al Sharpton as a character witness. The mayor made a visit to Sharpton’s headquarters and again painted himself a do-gooder caught up in a witch hunt. “The voices of the status quo find many, many ways to undermine progress,” he claimed.

Sharpton echoed the “woe is us” tone, calling de Blasio a man of “integrity.” He should have found a word with less baggage.

Recall that the mayor had called Sheldon Silver a “man of integrity” when Silver was charged in the federal case that saw the former Assembly speaker sentenced to 12 years in prison and hit with nearly $7 million in fines and restitution. And this Thursday, another alleged man of integrity, former GOP state Senate leader Dean Skelos, gets sentenced for his thievery.

Silver and Skelos are Cuomo’s former amigos from three-men-in-a-room infamy, and now the governor himself could be under the feds’ microscope again. Prosecutors want records showing whether six current and former members of his inner circle did anything to “benefit” 20 different companies that got state business.

Cuomo and de Blasio are sworn enemies, and each is no doubt happy to see the other in a jam. For now, both would be wise to hold the laughter.

A Khan-do mayor

Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, wrote an op-ed promising that: “As mayor, I will be the British Muslim who finally roots out extremism and radicalisation from British society. I will support mainstream Muslims to challenge extremists and work with the internet providers to ban extremist websites.”

Wait, if he’s saying there is an actual link between Islam and Islamic terrorists, he must be wrong. President Obama says there is no connection, and he always knows best.

Trans-fer fight to lockers

A reader offers a suggestion on the transgender tempest in a pisspot.

“Bathrooms are very private places,” he writes. “Locker rooms and shower rooms are not. How many women would be happy to share a locker room or shower with a transgender woman who has male sexual organs?

“My guess is that the polling numbers would be dramatically different if pollsters asked about locker rooms instead of bathrooms.”