A Confounding Hypothetical: What if Trump Were a Democrat?

23 Apr, 2026

My wife forwarded to me a screenshot of a Facebook post that I found quite thought-provoking:

"If Trump was a Democrat would you still hate him?"

Trump WAS a Democrat, and YES, I hate him then too, you soup fork.

No one hates Trump because he's a Republican, we hate him because he's a shitty human being— which was evident long before his time in politics.

This post is interesting to me primarily because I'm not entirely sure that the precipitating question, "would you still hate Trump if he were a Democrat?", even makes much sense in the first place.

Trump occupies a role in politics that transcends mundane discourse. He and his followers exist in a space where politics and values align. The most striking differences between, say, Trump and Bernie Sanders aren't merely whether the corporate tax rate should go up or down, or how much money ought to go toward the military versus a social safety net. The thing about Trump that is most appealing to his base (and most repugnant to everyone else) is that his policies very transparently flow from certain moral values that he wears on his sleeve. Trump cannot hide behind the assertion, for example, that he is not dramatically different from former Republican presidents in the realm of deportations simply because he intends to perform more of them. Under Trump's second administration, the question has not been one of how many deportations should happen, but one of how the human beings he intends to deport should be treated in the meantime. Democrats tend not to be necessarily opposed to the goal of deporting illegal immigrants, but, speaking purely for myself, I cannot possibly support Trump's efforts to do so because he has been conducting these deportations in monstrous and illegal ways, from arresting people at immigrations hearings to violating court orders to failing to ensure basic sanitation for the people he has locked up.¹ As a result, Trump has allowed his disregard for legality and human dignity to turn what would otherwise be a policy that I find relatively innocuous into a veritable humanitarian crisis. This is why I say that Trump is distinguished from Democrats (and the erstwhile Republican Party) not merely in terms of policy, but also in terms of values. And this distinction is foundational to our overarching question. After all, if the differences between "Trump" and "a Democrat" were just what numbers you plug into the formulas for distributing tax dollars, or deciding how many deportations should happen this year, the question of whether an anti-Trumper would still hate him if he were a Democrat wouldn't make much sense. Of course flipping a switch from "doesn't align with my policies" to "aligns with my policies" would get rid of the hatred, just as replacing a faulty lightbulb would mollify my hatred for a flickering light. But with Trump, distributing tax dollars becomes usurping Congress's power over the budget, and conducting deportations becomes keeping people in overcrowded camps with inadequate supplies and healthcare. Without this in the forefront of our minds, our original question is obvious and redundant. So it surely must be asked with this context in mind.

But if that is the case, it doesn't really become any easier to answer. What would it even mean for Trump to have these values and be a Democrat? Democrats oppose Trump because they disagree with his values. For our hypothetical to insist that he retains them might indicate that he just changes his label, and decides one day to identify as a Democrat. While it is true that many Americans see politics as merely a team sport, there would be no reason in this scenario for such a vapid Democrat to suddenly align themselves with him. If a "vote blue no matter who"-type of person had rallied behind, say, Kamala Harris, they would have no reason to stop just because Trump suddenly has the same blue "D" next to his name on the ballot. Perhaps this question is intended to ensnare Democrats who play the team sport while simultaneously having shared Trump's values all along, but if that were the case, for what reason would they have originally begun to bat for the Democratic team?

Perhaps, then, the question is meant more abstractly than it is framed. Maybe we're meant to take it as, "if a candidate appeared who has always been a Democrat but shares the traits which you find repugnant within Trump, would you hate him?" This framing doesn't help us much. Among Trump's qualities that Democrats tend to revile most are his vocal contempt for minorities, his attitude toward women (which is, at best, dismissive, and, at worst, misogynistic), his hostility toward the poor, his disregard for the Constitution, and his penchant for abusing his station for the purpose of enriching himself. It is certainly not inherently contradictory for these qualities to exist within a Democrat (and I believe many Democrats share them, to a certain extent), but, as before, it is difficult to conceive of how a politician could exist on the Democratic ticket and hold these values as openly and extremely as Trump does. Part of the problem here is that the mainstream Democrats, as just one among their many failures, have, since the dawn of MAGA, carved out no identity for themselves more comprehensive than "we're not Trump, and we want to return to the status quo."² Therefore, a modern Democrat sharing Trump's values is akin to a book that contains no words — the entire conception of "Democrat" in recent years is more or less defined in opposition to them. Let us not forget that a common Republican grievance against Democrats is their inclination to engage in cancel culture³; why would a party with few qualms against cancellation tolerate a candidate like Trump when there are a host of others to choose from? And if we move the goalpost from a mainstream Democrat to a genuinely progressive Democrat, holding party affiliation and Trump's values simultaneously goes from clumsy to downright nonsensical.

The only interpretation which remains is that we're not focusing on the vices which Trump has somewhat uniquely, and which directly color his actions as president, but those more vague ones which he shares with countless other people: avarice, ego, crassness, tactlessness, possible encroaching senility, etc. In that case, I imagine the response from most Democrats would be an unreserved "yes, I'd still hate him, but if he were the best or only option for advancing my policy goals, I'd bite the bullet and support him." Thanks to the disastrous two-party system we've been cursed with in the United States, most Americans who think even somewhat critically about politics understand that we've been coerced into voting for the lesser of two evils since, arguably, the day we gained independence. "The person you've voted for is not a perfect manifestation of your ideals" would not be a gotcha against a hypothetical bizarro-world Democratic Trump voter for the same reason it's not a smoking gun for us in the real world; the voter already understands that. I certainly understood that when I bit the bullet and voted for Harris in 2024, because a return to the normality of a country which I believe Democrats consistently fail to sufficiently improve was a far preferable choice to a descent into a Project 2025-esque collapse of our democracy.

Can that really be at the heart of the original question? Asking Democrats whether they would rather abstain from voting than vote for someone who fails to perfectly exemplify their ideals? In a country where we are obliged to vote for the lesser of two evils, the only people who have the luxury of voting for someone who does perfectly exemplify their ideals are A) people who don't think deeply enough to have ideals in the first place, B) people who eschew the system and cast their vote for a doomed third party, for better or worse, and C) people who have developed a cult around their party's candidate.

What a depressing position we've found ourselves in.

#Trump #politics