Count me among those who, after Ted Cruz defeated Donald Trump in the Wisconsin primary, felt growing confidence The Donald would be stopped. Trump’s whining that Cruz was outmaneuvering his campaign in grabbing delegate support at the state level suggested Trump thought he was in trouble too.

Now, his New York win and Tuesday’s five-state, 110-delegate sweep, are challenging confidence in the Stop-Trump ranks.

True, the wins were expected, even the lopsidedness of the vote. Trump’s only real competitor, Cruz, had conceded much of the territory as too unwelcoming to warrant investment of time and resources.

Mathematically, the race remains only even odds that Trump will claim the nomination. He has about 955 bound delegates and needs almost 300 of the 500 bound delegates at stake in the remaining primaries, many of which take place on territory that is not nearly so inviting. While ABC News reports that a majority Pennsylvania’s 54 unbound delegates have declared for Trump, they can undeclare quite easily. Trump is not there yet.

Psychologically, however, Trump is an overwhelming favorite. And that matters a lot.

Cruz faces a challenge of gargantuan proportions, Mt. Everest really. The Texan must make a strong enough case to remaining primary voters that they will resist the almost universal human tendency to hop aboard a winning bandwagon. On top of that, he needs to convince a meaningful block of voters, who may not even like him, to still vote for him in a strategic effort to block Trump so that their favorite candidate, whoever that may be, can prevail at an open convention. But few people vote strategically.

As for the other guy in the Republican race, John Kasich, he won only 5 delegates Tuesday in a region he had claimed was his turf. If ever his candidacy had any rationale or purpose, it disappeared. After Tuesday, there’s little strategy in voting to preserve a lifeless candidate.

And that brings us to the May 3rd primary in Indiana, with its trove of 57 bound delegates. As part of the recently-struck Cruz-Kasich alliance to stop Trump, Kasich has bowed out in favor of Cruz – sort of. He cancelled public appearances and campaign ads, but said his Indiana supporters should still vote for him. Huh?

Nevertheless, before the deal Cruz and Kasich were competitors splitting and diluting the anti-Trump vote; now, they are allies optimizing and strengthening it. There’s value in that, though not terribly much.

But every little bit counts: in Indiana, Trump held only a 6-point lead over Cruz in the Real Clear Politics average of polls predating his sweep yesterday and predating the alliance, and it included 19 percent for Kasich. If Kasich supporters switch to the Texan, that lead reverses. There’s logic to the switch. To the average Kasich supporter, Trump is the anti-Christ and Cruz merely a fallen angel. But, on the other side, there’s Trump’s Tuesday sweep and his endorsement by Bobby Knight, the Hoosiers’ legendary basketball coach.

In order to blunt Trump’s momentum and rebalance the psychology of the race Cruz needs to win the Hoosier State. By winning, he would grab 30 statewide delegates outright and, logically, take most of the delegates in the state’s nine congressional districts. The Indiana winner will take from 45 to 57 of its delegates.

The following week, Cruz is heavily favored in Nebraska where all 38 bound delegates go to the statewide winner.

If Cruz prevails, his Indiana-Nebraska delegate haul will sustain the mathematical and psychological life of his campaign and the Stop-Trump forces. Indeed, since Cruz is heavily favored to win 59 bound delegates in the winner-takes-all contests in South Dakota and Montana on June 7, Trump would face his own daunting challenge: needing 300 bound delegates from a shrunken pool of as little as 346.

To pull it off, Cruz must embrace the central reality of Trumpism, namely that Trump has tapped into a bedrock concern that the GOP has failed to acknowledge. The GOP is the party of capitalism, free trade and globalism, which proponents credit with having lifted billions out of poverty around the world over the last quarter century. That’s great, but it means nothing to American blue collar workers whom those same forces have pushed into poverty, as their jobs have gone overseas. Trump is absolutely right that these forces must be modified and moderated in order to protect American workers.

Cruz has been running as a “Constitutional conservative.” That’s important, but pales in comparison to the economic concerns of angry and alienated GOP primary voters. They want a plan to generate real jobs, not low-wage “service economy” jobs. Cruz has one week to reformulate his message, which does contain the essential elements. He needs to speak from his heart about the crisis in blue collar America. He needs to explain that Trump doesn’t offer any solutions at all, except off-the-cuff bluster about “15 percent tariffs” and “making better deals.”

Cruz has little time. Lose Indiana and it’s essentially over.

Red Jahncke is president of The Townsend Group Intl., LLC and an occasional contributor to The Day. Reach him at RTJahncke@gmail.com or Twitter @RedJahncke.