So Donald Trump is creating real havoc in the GOP. While the choice of a small but real minority (in the 35 percent realm), a majority of the GOP base and the party establishment are in outright panic mode. Not only does Trump threaten the GOP’s electoral chances this year, but he does so without any real fealty to conservative ideology.
Luckily, we have nothing of that sort on our side. But why not engage in a thought experiment—what would a Trump-equivalent candidate on the Left look like?
It couldn’t be someone like Dennis Kucinich, because while he might endanger the party electorally, he was genuinely liberal. There are certainly crazy “Democrats” like Fred Phelps, who ran for office four times, but he’d never get anything beyond marginal support. Maybe an actor like Charlie Sheen? Someone able to ride celebrity status into … something? Seems like a stretch.
But what if that person was … Donald Trump himself?
It’s clear that Trump has no ideological mooring or conviction. He’s just a putrid mess of narcissism and self-indulgence. He happened to land on the Republican side because of Hillary Clinton’s dominance, but had things been different, could he have ended up running on our side?
Trump was someone who donated to Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, who advocated for single-payer healthcare, who refused to back Kim Davis’s Kentucky craziness, who has advocated trade protectionism, who has called for higher taxes on the wealthy, who mocked Mitt Romney’s attacks on immigrants, who was pro-choice, who supported an assaults-weapon ban, who railed against foreign interventionism, and who favored legalizing drugs. Oh, and he was a registered Democrat until 2009.
He could actually make a stronger case for running as a Democrat than what he ended up doing on the GOP side. So the question is, would his brash, sexist, xenophobic persona play on the Democratic side? (Because regardless of his stance on the issues above, you can’t divorce the asshole from Trump.)
According to Pew, 24 percent of Democrats think immigrants make America worse in the long run. And there you have it, that would be Trump’s Democratic base, mostly working-class, white “Reagan Democrat” types. You could certainly see him getting support from Southern registered-Democrats-now-voting-Republican racist-populist voters. And liberals sure do love the “billionaire economic populist” archetype. It’s heroic to agitate against your own economic self-interests!
Thus, Trump getting 30-35 percent of the Democratic base isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. His “Make America great again” schtick wouldn’t play well with any semblance of a Democratic majority, but it could put him roughly where he is today on the Republican side.
And at that point, his relevance to the debate would be dictated by just how many other candidates were splitting up the vote. If Republicans had anyone getting 45-50 percent support, few would give two shits about Trump.
But just imagine if Trump, in a divided Democratic field, was headed toward a delegate majority! The Democratic establishment would definitely be in meltdown mode, as would we in the netroots. He would represent a betrayal of the principles of fairness and tolerance that guide our party, not to mention spell certain doom to our down-ballot candidates. And his stupidity and narcism would drive us crazy!
Ultimately, there’s plenty of reasons why the likelihood of facing this scenario is scant. For one, our party isn’t as fragmented into as many factions as the GOP, making it harder for anyone to be a serious threat with only a third of support. But yeah, in this thought experiment, our version of Donald Trump would be Donald Trump himself. And that, in itself, is kinda fucking crazy.