Jonathan Chait: “Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States would pose an unprecedented threat to the health of American democracy and possibly world stability. There is, however, an upside: Trump’s campaign is an absolute garbage fire. By all accounts it is the most organizationally and strategically inept campaign for a successful major-party nominee in recorded history.”

“To the extent that running a competent campaign matters, it will hurt Trump very badly. Yes, he won the Republican primary by relying on a massive imbalance of media coverage and exploiting a divided, extremely large field that failed to coalesce against him. Yes, he tapped into deep strains of anger in the conservative base that fellow Republicans ignored. But he’s not a political savant, and he hasn’t abolished the rules of politics.”

New York Times: Trump’s Campaign Stumbles As It Tries to Go Big

Dan Balz: “It’s been almost five weeks since Donald Trump’s victory in Indiana made him the presumptive Republican nominee.”

“Here’s what’s happened since: He’s wasted time, proved to be a sore winner and veered sharply off message. He’s put a higher premium on settling scores than finding a script that will appeal to a wider, general-election audience. Will it cost him?”

First Read: “On March 3, Mitt Romney delivered his own blistering speech on Donald Trump, which used some of the same lines of attack that Hillary Clinton included in her anti-Trump address yesterday… But today — exactly three months ago since that speech — Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is now complete, especially after House Speaker Paul Ryan (Romney’s 2012 running mate) endorsed the real-estate mogul. Ryan tried to give himself distance by withholding his endorsement for 29 days after Trump became the GOP’s presumptive nominee, particularly given their differences over immigration, entitlements, trade, and Trump’s Muslim ban.”

“But it’s hard to disagree with this take from the Cook Political Report‘s David Wasserman: ‘Speaker Paul Ryan endorses nominee who wants to ban Muslims from the country. The hostile takeover of the GOP is now complete.'”

Joe Klein: “Winning the news cycle is one of the more odious concepts in American politics. It is a recent media invention that rewards superficiality and punishes substance; it is, at best, a nano-measurement of micro-momentum–but anything measurable is news, and therefore easier to cover than subjects that may require actual thought. Which makes it perfect for Donald Trump. He uses the daily contest brilliantly, with an almost demonic perversity. He almost always wins the day.”

“Clinton, by contrast, does not win many news cycles. Her most notable days are those when negative events spin beyond her control–when the State Department’s inspector general scolds her for cutting corners with her emails; when Bernie Sanders or his supporters do violence to her sense of inevitability. This is rightly seen as a problem for her; Trump is always on the offensive, in every sense of the word.”