Markos Moulitsas: Why we fear the fringe

Donald Trump may be riding high in primary polling, but that’s all a matter of perspective. In the Huffington Post’s polling composite, which aggregates all public polling, Bernie Sanders gets 36 percent of Democrats, while Trump gets 37 percent of Republicans. So what makes one a hopeless underdog and the other the prohibitive favorite? 

It comes down to the size of the field. But both candidates are barely getting a third of their party’s support. 

{mosads}Meanwhile, the anti-Trump majority in the GOP is aggressively anti-Trump. 

National Review dedicated an entire issue to blasting the celebrity billionaire. In its pages, conservative stalwarts from Glenn Beck to Brent Bozell to William Kristol to Cal Thomas echoed the same themes: “Anger is not policy”; “A shoot-from-the-hip, bombastic showoff is the last thing we need or can afford”; “Trump is no conservative.” Whether it’s coming from the establishment, movement conservatives or whatever passes for “intellectuals” on the right, the chorus agrees: Trump isn’t just a danger to Republican chances up and down the ballot in 2016, he’s a danger to conservatism itself. 

And they are right.

Trump’s ideology is a mess; he’s clearly unwilling to care about anything beyond self-aggrandizement and making a buck. He has donated to Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, supported single-payer healthcare, trade protectionism and an assault-weapons ban, called for higher taxes on the wealthy, has been pro-choice and anti-foreign interventionism. Clinton sat in the front row at one of his weddings. He was a registered Democrat until 2009. 

Could Democrats ever face this sort of destructive force inside the party, someone who could garner enough support from base Democrats in a fragmented field that it would endanger the things we care about and are fighting for? 

We’ve had our fair share of fringe figures before, no doubt — say, Dennis Kucinich. But at least he was a liberal, regardless of how badly he might damage the party in the general. And that’s the difference between Trump and someone like Ted Cruz — both would tank their party in November, but at least Cruz is genuinely conservative.

So in an alternate universe, who could the Democratic version of Donald Trump be? More likely than not, Donald Trump. 

What would’ve stopped Trump from running as a Democrat had the field been more wide open? Certainly not ideology, as noted above. He was happy to pal around with Democrats and support signature liberal policies before he had to win Republican votes. And while his xenophobia and bigotry would be anathema to the Democratic establishment and the bulk of the liberal base, Pew Research polling found that about a quarter of Democrats are hostile to immigration. Trump would garner that white, blue-collar “Reagan Democrat” vote almost by default. His populist message could resonate with a handful more, and suddenly, a third of the Democratic primary vote seems well within reach. 

Of course, the likelihood of anything like this actually happening would be scant — Democrats are nowhere near as fragmented as Republicans. While Republicans split their votes among establishment, Tea Party, libertarian, and religious right factions, Democrats pretty much come down to establishment vs. anti-establishment. That’s why the Democratic contest had no room for more participants. 

Still, the fact that Trump could do roughly as well in a Democratic primary as he is doing on the Republican side shows not only that Democrats might’ve dodged a bullet, it validates the hysterical conservative reaction to his likely nomination. 

Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.