At the end of a week in which Donald Trump seemed to be self-sabotaging even more than usual, most devastatingly with his protracted public fight with the parents of a fallen U.S. war hero, the temptation to begin writing his campaign's obituary is strong.
Even the Republican nominee's campaign chair is said to be throwing up his hands at his inability to control him. Fellow Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves. His staunchest allies, the likes of Newt Gingrich, are speaking of staging interventions. Three months before election day, the candidate himself has begun claiming the race is "rigged" against him.
But as much as that sounds like loser talk, we should know by now that it's a bad idea for those horrified by the idea of Mr. Trump in the White House to prematurely breathe a sigh of relief.
Analysis: Why the world wants Clinton to win
Over the past year, it has often been possible to get the impression from social and traditional media that Mr. Trump's latest outrages have finally made his candidacy unviable. Then that's turned out to be wishful thinking in an echo chamber, disconnected from the universe from which he draws his support.
Yes, he's currently in worse shape than at any other point since he locked up the GOP's nomination. But there are still at least a few reasons not to completely discount the prospect of a demagogic, narcissistic nativist with an odd affinity for Vladimir Putin having the nuclear codes in a few months' time.
He's still not losing by that much
With Mr. Trump doing just about everything imaginable to turn off voters, and Hillary Clinton enjoying a bump from a Democratic convention more successful than the Republican one, most polls show him trailing her nationally by about 10 points.
Presidential candidates have come back from worse. Around this point in the cycle in 1988, for instance, polls showed eventual winner George H.W. Bush at a 17-point disadvantage to Michael Dukakis. Harry Truman spent a sustained period of 1948 trailing Thomas Dewey by double digits, although in that case the polls famously missed his imminent victory right up to the campaign's end. Gerald Ford didn't quite pull it off in 1976, but went from trailing Jimmy Carter by more than 20 points to losing by just two.
Yes, the electorate seems more polarized than in the past, which suggests a limited number of voters willing to change their minds. And Mr. Trump has historically low personal ratings, limiting capacity for growth. And he's at risk of losing places such as Utah and Georgia that have long been Republican strongholds.
But he briefly pulled slightly ahead of Ms. Clinton after the Republican convention and before the Democratic one, according to the polling averages calculated by RealClear Politics, which suggests that his ceiling isn't so low that he is incapable of getting more votes than her. And in none of the states that are usually key battlegrounds – such as Florida, Ohio and Virginia – has Ms. Clinton consistently enjoyed a commanding lead.
Nobody knows who will win the turnout battle
Recent U.S. elections have tended to be at least as much about mobilization – who can motivate would-be supporters to actually cast ballots – as persuasion.
That may mean that Mr. Trump is in even worse shape than it appears. Ms. Clinton's campaign has more money, more field workers and better data, all of which add up to being much more prepared to get out the vote.
Or it may mean he gets a bump above whatever he is polling by November. While those angry, fired-up crowds that come out to his rallies don't represent as large a segment of the electorate as he seems to think, they suggest that there are people – especially white, working-class people who sometimes stay home on election day, and could swing results in places such as Ohio and Pennsylvania – very eager to cast votes for him.
The Democrats can ill afford their supporters taking for granted that Mr. Trump will lose. Because their own candidate, for all her professionalism, is unlikely to inspire much enthusiasm herself.
His opponent is capable of blowing it
Part of the reason Mr. Trump's terrible personal numbers aren't completely fatal to his candidacy is that Ms. Clinton's are also unusually low.
At a time when polls suggest less than 20 per cent of the electorate thinks the country is on the right track, Ms. Clinton is much more an epitome of a maligned political establishment than the current President.
At best, she will struggle to motivate on her own merits many of the voters who came out for Barack Obama the past two elections. At worst, further controversy that reinforces perceptions she is dishonest and entitled – along the lines of the scandal about reckless use of personal e-mail while secretary of state, which has dragged on because of her defensiveness about it – will actively cause backers to stay home or even switch sides.
Ms. Clinton, as much as anyone, can ill afford to take too much comfort from Mr. Trump's current woes. As a candidate, she has tended to be at her best when in tough and at her worst when the many members of the Democratic elite in her orbit begin measuring the curtains.
Events
No candidate, (presumably) even Mr. Trump, will ever admit to hoping for terror attacks or other violent horrors to be inflicted upon their country. But his immediate told-you-so response to June's Orlando massacre tipped his hand.
Maybe he was wrong to assume that the more voters feel threatened, the more they will turn to his us-versus-them strongman posturing. There is some history of Americans choosing a steady hand when they feel especially vulnerable, Lyndon Johnson's 1964 thrashing of Barry Goldwater being the most famous example.
But anything that gives cause to feel angry or unsafe this fall – another domestic attack, a particularly horrific one on foreign soil, an escalation of civic unrest into violence – would at minimum inject volatility, no matter how settled the race seemed. Given the way 2016 has played out so far, nobody who fears a Trump presidency should be able to breathe easy for a good while yet.
Adam Radwanski