For Donald Trump, this was more than a terrible week. It was a turning point

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/05/donald-trump-week-campaign-turning-point-2016-election

Trump has demolished his campaign, his brand and his party. He has squandered his vice-presidential pick and his convention, and several battleground states along with them. He picked several fights he could not win, and showed no sign of learning from his own failure.

It would be tempting to say this was just another week in the bizarre life of the Republican presidential nominee. But it wasn’t. This week was a decisive turning point in the 2016 election, and there have been remarkably few of them in an campaign that is supposedly volatile.

In fact, the volatility and unpredictability of this election doesn’t come from polls or votes, but from the character of a single man: Donald J Trump. The real surprise of 2016 is how constant this contest has been.

Trump led the primary polls from the beginning and never lost his lead. He only surprised the chattering classes by defying their certainty that he would lose. That certainty was founded on nothing related to polling data, but rather their sheer disgust and disbelief with Trump’s politics.