While Hillary Clinton has yet to knock off a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont — who may just beat her in California next Tuesday — Donald Trump has whacked 16 fierce opponents, then quickly consolidated support within the Republican Party.

Those two developments combined — each unexpected, and each counter to conventional predictions from pundits — beg the question of what will happen when Clinton finally faces off against Trump in the general election?

“The Clintons have met their match in Donald Trump.”

Clinton will meet her match in Trump simply because he is so unconventional, something the Clinton machine has not seen before. She has a long and abysmal political record, whereas Trump doesn’t have one; she’s running for Obama’s third term in a year that favors the political outsider; and Trump has made himself widely accessible to the media while Hillary hasn’t held a press conference in all of 2016.

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“Do you want change, do you want disruption in Washington — and do you want authenticity? Those are the two things Hillary Clinton can never ever be, which is why I think she will lose California,” Patrick Griffin, managing partner of Purple Strategies and former media consultant for George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney, said on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

“You mentioned earlier I wasn’t the biggest Donald Trump fan,” Griffin said. “Here’s the problem for me. I may not be a guy who had Trump as his first choice, but I think many Republicans are starting to come to the realization that if the choice is Trump or Hillary Clinton, the idea of Hillary Clinton in the presidency is completely unfathomable to me.” 

Griffin hit the nail on the head. Many Americans are forced to realize that while they may not know what they might get with a President Trump, they certainly know what they’d get with a President Clinton. Her record alone is plagued by disastrous and failed attempts at policy that even she has a hard time defending. Trump, on the other hand, has no political record. He has never had to take a vote — so while he is chastised for his flip-flopping on some issues, he has the flexibility to do it without a record that holds him down.

What’s more, this unique 2016 election has been the year of the outsider — cue the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump within their respective parties. Many people are disaffected by politics as usual and are disgusted by the self-serving actions of Washington. Undoubtedly, Clinton will be a third term of Obama and many Americans, specifically young Americans, are jaded from his two terms in office and his empty promises. Trump, meanwhile, is the ultimate political outsider, which will only be to Clinton’s detriment in the general election.

“There are a lot of Republicans out there saying, ‘I wish a Bush or a Romney or a McCain had unloaded on Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and the media the way this guy does,'” Griffin said. “He is speaking for a lot of people who are beginning to feel like ‘someone is saying the things we might think or saying the things we wish others might have said before.'”

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While Clinton claims she is transparent, she has yet to hold a press conference in 2016. Her campaign has been dogged by scandal after scandal, ranging from “pay to play” allegations at the Clinton Foundation to the use of a private server during her tenure as secretary of state — which might be why she’s avoiding the media.

Her campaign has been trying to control the press through selective interviews, which has come off as staged and inauthentic. Trump, while combative with the media, is extremely accessible, holding a fair number of wide-ranging press conferences in which he takes multiple questions.

If the Clintons think they can use their tired playbook in this general election against Trump, they are sorely mistaken. “The Clintons have met their match in Donald Trump,” Griffin said.