It’s that sort of idea that has some liberals flipping out. After all, this was supposed to be an easy contest! How can it be that a candidate who has lied repeatedly and blatantly, insulted minority groups, not bothered to learn anything about policy, and proposed banning Muslims from the country be even close to winning? Just a few months ago, even straight reporters were speculating that the race might be over, and that Trump had practically no way to win. Now, it looks like a nailbiter.

Or maybe all of this is wishful thinking from Trump fans and a classic example of what Obama adviser David Plouffe described as bedwetting, the tendency among Democrats to freak out and panic at the slightest sign of trouble. But privately, many Republicans who are horrified by Trump but have taken solace in the expectation that he would lose by a wide margin are starting to freak out too.

One interesting way to think about this is to look at Huffington Post Pollster’s polling average:

Clinton vs. Trump

What sticks out here is the Trump side of the graph. Clinton’s standing bounces up and down, but Trump follows a regular pattern. First, he has a ceiling right around 42.5 percent, and he’s never exceeded that. Second, at more or less regular intervals, he climbs up to that ceiling, and then he commits a grievous gaffe. In mid-May, he was flying high, but then the Trump University scandal and his attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel knocked the wind out of his sails. (Remember that? When Trump endorser Paul Ryan called his comments textbook racism? Strange times.) He then regained his standing at the RNC, just in time to pick a fight with Khizr and Ghazala Khan and tumble again.

One way to think through the current Trump boom is to watch and see whether he’s able to break through the magical 42.5 percent ceiling. Based on past experience, the key to that is whether he’s able to avoid committing another catastrophic error.

After months of failed “pivots” and “resets,” the newest Trump team does seem to have done a better job of keeping their candidate on message and, most importantly, on script. A campaign synonymous with bumbling has started to look nearly professional.

In part, that’s a triumph of bar-lowering, and it doesn’t mean Trump hasn’t said some bizarre things; there’s the burgeoning Trump Foundation scandal, too. It may be that there’s some fatigue setting in with Trump’s many outlandish comments, or it may be, as many progressives insist, that this is all the media’s fault for covering Clinton too harshly. But whatever the reason, he’s mostly managed to let the focus stay on Hillary Clinton, from her failure to hold press conferences to her continued email troubles to her recent illness. It turns out that staying out of the public eye helps Trump, just like it helped her during the weeks when she sat back and let him self-destruct.