“Boy, were you wrong,” said a voice from behind as I paused during my morning walk along Grand Avenue.  

“About what?” I said as I turned to greet my old friend K.C. “I’m wrong about a lot of things.”

“About Donald Trump,” K.C. said. “You said he’d never get more than 20 percent.”

I suddenly felt philosophical and replied, “As H.L. Mencken used to say, ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.’ ”

“Yeah. Well, a third of the Republican party now thinks he should be the nominee, and his numbers are still climbing,” K.C. said.

“And what about Hillary Clinton,” he added. “Didn’t you say that she was the most qualified candidate to run for president since Dwight Eisenhower.”

“I might have said something like that,” I admitted. “She has a great resume: corporate lawyer, author, first lady, United States senator and secretary of state.”

“So why is she imploding?” K.C. asked. “How can Bernie Sanders have caught up to her in the polls. He’s a socialist.” 

“A socialist,” he repeated.

“Well, it’s complicated,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” K.C. replied. “Clinton and Trump are opposite sides of the same coin.”

“If you mean that she has a ton of government experience and he has none, I’ll give you that,” I said. “She might even be as good as Trump in the private sector. Remember all the money she made trading cattle futures in Arkansas when Bill was governor. It was something like a 100-to-1 return. I’ll bet Trump never had a deal that sweet.”

“No, no, no,” K.C. said. “You’re talking substance. This is politics, and politics has nothing to do with substance.

“When I say Hillary and Donald are opposites, I mean that is she is perceived as being evasive and defensive. She’s paranoid and secretive. I have a divorced friend who says Hillary can never win because she reminds every divorced man of his ex-wife.” 

“Trump is the opposite,” K.C. continued. “He’s direct and to the point. There’s no filter. People like that. Even when he says stuff that they know is wrong. Plus, he’s the misogynist that a lot of men are but don’t want to admit.” 

“Reporters pretend they don’t like him, but down deep they know that Trump brings home their bacon. He gets them ratings. He gets people to read their stories,” K.C. said. 

“He’s like Dick Turner, the Iowa attorney general back in the 1960s and 1970s. Dick was a one-man sideshow. Remember when he raided church basements in northeast Iowa and busted up bingo games.”

“Hillary has no sense of humor, and her campaign has no originality,” K.C. continued. “They’re making all the same mistakes they made in 2008 when Obama beat her. 

“She should take a lesson from Carly Fiorina,” he said. “Have you seen her new commercial where she busts Trump in the chops for his slam at the way she looks? 

“Trump told voters to look at Carly’s face and said: ‘Would you vote for that face?’

“Fiorina didn’t whine about what a stupid, sexist comment that was. She went out and cut a commercial that shows a lot of women’s faces, one by one. 

“Then she says in the commercial that women are the face of leadership in the Republican Party, in their communities, in businesses and at places of worship. And she tells Democrats that women are not a special interest group, but the majority of the nation. It’s very effective.”  

“The point is,” K.C. said, “Fiorina took a stupid Trump comment, poked fun at it and turned it into a huge plus for her with women voters, all in 60 seconds.”

“Hillary’s never done anything nearly that creative,” he said as he walked away.