Let's imagine an exact-as-possible liberal analogue/mirror-image of Trump

[BigT]

What Trump did was appeal to a lot of the underlying feelings of conservatives without actually being on the traditional conservative side. He used a lot of the less pretty tactics used by Republicans, but naked. I mean, the hatred for immigration is the same as the nationalist sentiment Trump tapped into. People are against immigration due to thinking they are taking their jobs, so he tapped into that. Trump tapped into the anti-PC concept by actually being a flat out asshole, rather than “telling it like it is.” He appealed to a sense of authority by being an outright authoritarian in style. He had no compulsion to avoid overpromising, unlike a typical Republican who would want to promise only a bit more than they thought they could accomplish. And rather than just use the US vs. THEM mindset, he basically declared war on anyone who didn’t agree with him.

So an equivalent would be to tap into emotions and feelings used on the left while actually espousing them nakedly. Stuff like our righteous indignation. Our hatred for intolerance. Our desire for peace. Our dislike of authority. Our feeling that the rich have cheated there way to power. Our desire to punish social justice wrongdoers (instead of criminal justice wrongdoers). Probably should also be isolationist and anti-military to an extreme. Actually take PC to a real extreme. And I’m sure there’s more.

All the while, he needs to be someone that our own values would seem to indicate we shouldn’t like, but the emotions he instills make us overlook that. We can tell he’s a bad person, but he makes us feel good and angry at the other side, so we ignore it.

And I say he, but probably should be a minority of some sort, so we feel compassion towards their oppression and thus justify their bad tactics even more.

I think some of this has been tapped into with the above suggestions, but not all of it.

Oh, they should also be incompetent and unwilling to listen to others, so they’re actually dangerous to the world.

[iiandyiiii]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

That parenthetical remark is the reason this thread is not getting anywhere IMHO.

The thing about Trump is that he didn’t espouse the standard conservative values while personally violating those same values. He was kind of orthogonal, in that he said many things that were aligned with conservatives, some that tended more liberal, and some that crossed all lines. But he had a big edge in that he was the only prominent candidate saying the things he said, at least to the extent that he said them. So if his message spoke to you, he was your option.

If Trump would have been a run-of-the-mill conservative ideologically, then he would have been competing against others of that same stripe who didn’t have the disadvantage of being conservative heretics, which would have been a huge obstacle for him. But that’s pretty much what people are trying to conjure up on the liberal side - a run-of-the-mill liberal and personal hypocrite - and that theoretical candidate would have a hard time against run-of-the-mill liberals who were not personal hypocrites. The only way to think of it is if someone managed to put together some unique set of positions that no other major candidate was putting forth, and think about whether perhaps the voters would overlook his personal heresies in order to get the one guy they wanted.

Beyond all that, I think (or at least hope) Trump’s election is kind of a unique event, unlikely to be repeated on either side. So if you’re asking “how likely is it that this unique event would be repeated in a slightly different circumstance?”, you need to consider that it’s very unlikely to be repeated in the exact same circumstance as well.

You’re no fun.

[Horatius]

@Wesley_Clark

But to me Trump goes beyond that. He isn’t just a hypocrite, he is deranged, unstable, unqualified and mentally ill. I don’t know who on the left fits that category who the democrats would happily vote for. I can’t think of anyone on the left who is a national figure who is unstable and irrational like Trump.

Yeah, as I was compiling that list, I knew there were people who matched each box. But usually only one or two.

It’s Trump’s ability to check all the boxes, and then go beyond it into batshit crazy territory that make him unique. He’s not just a blatant hypocrite, he’s a conspiracy theorist, a narcissist, profoundly intellectually incurious, wishy-washy when he’s not being heavy-handed, childish and petulant.

[BigT]

Oo, yeah. We definitely need leftist conspiracy theorist in there, too. Stuff like big pharma holding back cancer cures, secret meeting among the rich to take over the world, etc. Might even make the rich the scapegoat the way immigrants and Muslims are for Trump.

[Annoying_Buzz]

@DinoR

Jill Stein.

She’s not into trade agreements. There’s the distrust of government bought out by corruption. Her vice Presidential candidate last year thought what was going on in Ukraine has a lot to do with Zionists paying neo-nazis to cause trouble in the streets so we can probably check an anti-semitism box. She didn’t seem to concern herself with well sourced facts although I never quite saw her go full “I’m basically citing chain emails.” She’s an anti-vaxxer. Although she is different from Trumjp on immigration the rise in undocumented immigrants she put dow as one of the failures of NAFTA. She wanted to reevaluate our role in NATO and get out of being the world cop. She’s profoundly lacking in experience.

All she needs is a bad spray tan.

That was my first thought. Stunning ability to alienate everyone but a small cadre of core fanatics, likely to embarrass the country when dealing with other world leaders, favors ideological purity over ability and experience, likely to leave key functions of government neglected and inoperative, and would probably cause the Democrats to get slaughtered in the first mid-term election due to association with her.