Imagine if Donald Trump were a liberal

As John Lennon said, it’s easy if you try.

The reason for this is not that Donald Trump has some secret liberal core. It’s that he has no core. Donald Trump believes in one thing: himself. If he thought he would have had better electoral success as a Democrat, he would have run as one. If you don’t believe me, consider his changing position on abortion.

Despite his flexible ideology, Trump certainly fits in the Republican party better than the Democratic one. He clearly disdains people different from himself — women, people of color, immigrants (unless he marries them) — and this obvious dislike would be disqualifying among most progressives.

Furthermore, as a liberal myself, I believe we tend to be, in general, kinder, more generous people. After all, we believe in taking care of people other than ourselves. That said, Trump as a person is pond scum. I had a really hard time finding a picture of him looking anything other than angry or creepy.

But let’s face it, despite our claims to our outrage over his personal behavior, that’s not the reason we don’t like him. Nor is it his clearly authoritarian impulses.

No, there are one of two reasons we don’t like him. The first reason — the most charitable — is that he stands for a policy agenda counter to ours. If you care about the…