Donald Trump is so fond of the word “winner” that he even applies it to pieces of chicken. Having lunch with the FT a couple of years ago, the mogul-turned-politician pointed his interviewer towards a particularly succulent portion and declared: “That piece looks like a winner.”

In Mr Trump’s world, the biggest winner of all is, of course, The Donald himself. His campaign for the Republican nomination has been based around the claim that: “I’m very good at winning. I believe in winning.” It is a remarkably successful pitch. Most opinion polls still show Mr Trump leading the race to be the Republican nominee.

All this chest-thumping is revealing. For Mr Trump’s claim to have magical winning properties appeals precisely to those Americans who fear that they and their country are turning into losers. In a typical rhetorical flourish, Mr Trump once argued that America is “going down fast. We can’t do anything right. We’re a laughing stock all over the world.” (The fear that people are laughing at you is, of course, a classic loser’s trait.)