As Donald Trump raises his right hand to assume the presidency next January 20, one word will explain how it all happened: Orlando.  What occurred early in the morning of June 12 in this usually quiet central Florida city – the greatest mass killing in American history – is going to reverberate through our presidential politics over the next five months and very possibly elect Trump president.

What makes Orlando so politically dangerous for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is that it does not fit their usual explanation for mass shootings.  Unlike Sandy Hook, it is not some deranged killer with easy access to guns; in this case it is a security guard who had a permit to carry a gun and who should have been on the FBI watch lists but apparently wasn’t.

Nor were the victims just random people, they were homosexuals in a gay bar who were targeted for death by Omar Mateen at the direction of Islamic State, on whose behalf he acted.  During the Holy Month of Ramadan, Islamic State has called for the death of homosexuals – that in Iraq and Syria it regularly hurls to their deaths from buildings – and of Americans, with the promise of Paradise for those who carry  this order out based on Islamic State’s reading of Islamic Sharia law.

What is most frightening is that Mateen acted specifically, logically and intentionally to carry out this directive.  No Administration has been more attentive to gay issues than the Obama Administration, yet here is the greatest mass murder of gays in the western world, committed as part of an ideology of fundamentalist Islamic extremism the Administration refuses to admit even exists.

These facts, and they will be amplified and explained over coming days and weeks, will leave Clinton and the Democrats with virtually no defense.  The Obama Administration has been more interested in transgender bathrooms than it has been fighting Islamic extremism and terrorism – words it refuses to use since that might upset some Muslims (can you imagine Franklin Roosevelt refusing us use the word “Nazi terror” because some Germans might be upset?)  The Democrats are in danger of sounding like Charles Lindbergh the day after Pearl Harbor.

Orlando will also show that the planned Democratic playbook to take down Trump is not going to work, because the campaign equilibrium is about to change dramatically.  In the week since Clinton secured the Democratic nomination, the mainstream media has engaged in a drumbeat of anti-Trump articles that in the light of Orlando seem downright silly.

Sunday’s Sacramento Bee, printed before Orlando of course, contained an article by a former Ronald Reagan staffer explaining why he was voting against Trump: “His answers … bomb the s—t out of ISIS are so appealingly and appealing simple; it’s no wonder so many people are gulping down the Kool-Aid.”  I wonder if the former staffer would like to ask the families of the 50 people killed in Orlando whether “bomb the s—t out of ISIS” is just gulping Kool-Aid.

Elsewhere in the Bee a Democratic campaign consultant worries about what parents should tell their children about Trump.  “Is this the man we ought to have at the helm of our Justice Department and Military?  Another good question to ask the Orlando parents who lost 50 of their children because the Justice Department in two Administrations has been unable to stop Islamic terrorism in the United States.

Over the next few days and weeks the trajectory of the presidential race is likely to dramatically shift as Trump’s fundamental argument that the government cannot keep its own people safe and secure will sink in, and Trump himself will seem all too prophetic.

Unless the Democrats are able to show the American people they are willing and able to fight Islamic terrorism, and especially the home grown variety we saw on display in Orlando, they are doomed to lose this election to Donald Trump no matter how outrageous he may seem.