EDITOR'S COLUMN: Why Trump is finished

There are only three ways to be a ladies’ man:

1)If you’re very good looking

2)If you’re a natural

3)If you have a whole lot of money.

Back in the 80s, there was a TV show called “Cheers” about a bar in Boston where the proprietor/bartender was a ladies’ man. Full of cheesy pick-up lines that usually failed, Sam Malone relied almost entirely upon his handsomeness to become the envy and idol of the bar’s regulars.

But no matter how much the regulars looked up to him because of his conquests, and lived vicariously through his tales, Sam never once made Cliff or Norm or Frasier or Woody feel inadequate or less-than — even though they obviously were in this regard.

Bill Clinton is a natural.

A natural has an uncanny ability to make women want to do what he wants them to do. You can tell a natural in the way he interacts with waitresses, and other total strangers, with whom he’ll have such instant rapport and chemistry you’d swear they’d known each other for years.

Books published in recent years have attempted to make a science of the natural, but these how-to manuals can really only teach how to impersonate a natural, not how to become one.

A natural would never brag about his exploits to a non-natural because it would make the non-natural feel inadequate or less-than, and the non-natural would turn on him and cease to respect him as an alpha.

Bill Clinton, for all his sleazy dealings with women, never once made men feel inadequate or less-than in that department, and it could even be argued that when he lied to all of us about not having “sexual relations with that woman,” he wasn’t doing it so much as a politician trying to bury a scandal, but as a player trying to protect the sanctity of his game.

Donald Trump is a ladies’ man. Donald Trump has a whole lot of money.

From his dust-up with Marco Rubio over hand size, to his hot mic ‘locker room talk’ with then-Access Hollywood reporter Billy Bush 11 years ago that only surfaced on Friday, Trump’s whole purpose in life, it would seem, is to make other men jealous of him.

As a ladies’ man by virtue of having a lot of money, Trump has been able to get away with it in ways the handsome man or the natural would never dream of.

In the fallout of the release of the tape, in which the Republican nominee for President made lewd and vulgar claims about his ability to aggressively dominate women, Trump has taken a dip in the polls. It’s a dip he can ill-afford having trailed from the start with absentee ballots already being cast.

The assumption is that the tape is hurting Trump with women, but I don’t think that’s it at all.

Women already know Trump is a pig and have made their judgments about him. Nothing in this 11-year-old tape is news to them.

This tape is the death-knell for Trump’s campaign because it offends men.

You can see it in the way mainstream Republican leaders abandoned him immediately, including John McCain, who apparently could get over Trump insulting him — and by extension, every POW — but this bawdy ‘locker room talk?’ well, now that apparently just went too far.

On any given night, the gang at Cheers could be counted on to be ridiculing Cliff Clavin as a 40-year-old virgin who hasn’t the confidence to even approach a woman. Sam always stuck up for Cliff, or at least offered him encouragement.

But, if even once, Sam joined in the fray and made a joke at Cliff’s expense, the whole gang would turn on him. Even though the barbs they were throwing at Cliff were far crueler, in that instant, Sam would lose their respect, his alpha status, his regulars and eventually his bar.

There would be no getting it back.