(CNN)By any conventional standard, Donald Trump just blundered through the worst three days of any presidential candidate in living memory.
Showing a characteristic refusal to back down from a fight, Trump took the almost unthinkable step of publicly escalating a feud with the parents of fallen US solider, Capt. Humayun Khan, who blasted Trump at last week's Democratic convention as unfit for the presidency.
And in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn't make a military move into Ukraine -- even though Putin has already done that by seizing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
In any normal political campaign, these stumbles would hobble Trump's ability to pass the fabled commander in chief test, in which Americans take their measure of a candidate and decide whether he is fit to lead them.
But no one needs reminding that 2016 is not a conventional political year.
Did Trump go too far?
Trump's previous feuds and torching of political correctness have not doomed him. In some cases, his behavior has lifted him among voters who believe something elemental about their nation is being taken away and who want a candidate who will blow the political system -- and political correctness -- to smithereens.
As if to make that point, Trump was defiant Monday despite a backlash in his own party over his apparently disastrous weekend.
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