3) This is going to get uglier. I believe the nasty, violent, and clearly coordinated protests disrupting Trump rallies this weekend are actually helping his primary chances for now. At this stage, they make Trump look like the victim of decidedly liberal and non-Republican groups. But if there's similar chaos at the Republican Convention and at Trump rallies in the general election, the perception will go from sympathy to fear, scorn, and a legitimate worry that a Trump who can't keep the peace at his campaign rallies surely won't be able to keep America safe as president.

That's what we saw most famously for the Democrats in 1968, when their violent Chicago convention significantly weakened nominee Hubert Humphrey from the get-go. What a lot of people forget is that it didn't stop in Chicago as summer turned to fall and hecklers relentlessly kept dogging Humphrey's campaign appearances. That combination left him way behind in the polls. Humphrey and running mate Sen. Edmund Muskie finally turned the chaotic tide late in the game when they started letting some hecklers come on stage and speak briefly into the microphones, making them look like elder statesmen by comparison. But it was too late. The surge in the polls Humphrey enjoyed in late October wasn't enough to carry him over the finish line ahead of Richard Nixon, who won the popular vote by a hair.

I bring up the 1968 example not only because that election was nasty, but because it was a decidedly violent and divisive year in American history. It was also a year of unprecedented American casualties in the Vietnam War. 2016 is, thankfully, not as violent a year. But the campaign rhetoric is probably nastier this year and the electorate is just as angry and divided, maybe more so.