Trumpism pauses at the gates of the city, teeth bared, howling, swords flashing, warhorses prancing, and then slinks away.

Time after time.

Ah, the triumph of that first unimaginable glory, when Trump, loser of the popular vote, squeaked into the White House on a white horse that turned into a mouse, on which he fled, knees high on his too small mouse-y mount as the grab for a second term hacked and sputtered.

And the wave of invaders who rolled up to the Capitol on Jan. 6, screaming that they'd hang Mike Pence, kill Nancy Pelosi and overturn a republic.

They melted away, back to talk radio and bumper stickers and rain-soaked flags hanging from front porches and shooting paper at the gun range.

Always so close. Able to reach but not to grasp. Able to bark but too disorganized to bite. Shouted slogans and fumbling fingers.

And always predicting ultimate victory and always foiled by better than half the population.

Face it. The victory of Donald Trump was a one-off, a conspiracy against the point spread, the heavyweight championship lost on a foul, the bookmaker's nightmare grinning and asking to be paid off for a $2 bet on a 10,000-to-one shot.

I'm writing on the Wednesday after an election whose ultimate vote totals are not yet known, but I've seen the Pickett's Charge of Trumpism, the long toil up the hill against the guns, the falling and the dying, and the rebel yell rising in defiance.

And the failure to reach the top of the hill, the tattered falling back.

In a year when inflation walks around the country looking for money to shrink, when the stock market stumbles and staggers and has retirees like me wondering how long before the food bank, in this troubled year, the Trump troops rolled forward again, and fell back again.

Republicans may indeed take Congress back, but not by much, and the red wave is a pink mist.

No landslide? In this rolling, boiling year of misery? Instead, at the most a sparse majority, and some governors toppled like Confederate statues. Abortion rights in state constitutions.

Trumpism can reach, but it cannot grasp, and it cannot conquer. Instead, it is always on the verge of taking America back, just days away from the red wave, just a splintered door away from the noose around Mike Pence's neck. "We the people" are always just one more snarky slogan, just one more conspiracy theory away from total victory.

Trumpism is weak. It's been weak from the start, and if it takes the Congress, it won't hold it for long. It hates elections because it can't win them reliably.

How long can you be always on the edge of ultimate victory before people see there's no pea under any of the shells? How long before you can't throw another flag over the corpse of defeat, and holler, "We'll get you next time?"

Trumpism cannot institutionalize the long shot, can't beat the odds in every game with a Hail Mary pass from a quarterback who never played in high school and was thrown off his college team for shaving points.

They wanted a revolution, and what they made was a riot. They wanted to speak to the ages, and what they did was whine in the moment and take their memes from the Russians and their worldview from people who wanted a return to segregation and the rotary phone.

If you hit the long shot, the best thing to do is put the money in your pocket. Don't bet on the next race.

Trumpism is folding. It's built to fade in the home stretch.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

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