Donald Trump has some strange domestic allies.  For want of a better term, call them the Bernie Sanders crowd (BSC).

Before you scoff, hear me out.  And for the record, this is not a dig at Trump.  Rather it is an observation of the inherent attractiveness of MAGA.

The BSC is different from the established left, which is epitomized by dinosaurs like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party.  This became evident in the 2016 primaries, when the Democratic National Committee (DNC), under the inept leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, clumsily rigged primary elections and caucuses to ensure that Hillary Clinton won the party's nomination. 

Although glossed over by the liberal media, that wound never healed.  In fact, an argument can be made that the BSC was decisive in electing Donald Trump.  Some 12 percent of those who voted for crazy Bernie in the primary ended up voting for Trump in November.  Many others stayed home on election day.  And then there were those who went off the reservation entirely and cast their ballots for Jill Stein of the Green Party.  All this helped Trump win.

So what accounts for this chasm between the BSC and the Democratic Party establishment?  A starting point is that the Sanders people are relatively young.  They come from the Millennial generation, which is generally defined as those between the ages of 20 and 35 in 2016.  The Millennials are 76 million strong, and they now slightly outnumber the Baby Boomers. 

A second point of dispute is that the BSC is not excited by the identity politics of race, sex, and gender, which is the bread and butter of the Democratic Party.  Their focus is instead centered on pocketbook issues.  Granted, a good percentage of these young people tilt toward socialism.  What motivates them the most are issues like free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage, universal Medicare coverage, soak-the-rich tax rates, and other pipe dreams.  One could sum up this outlook as wanting to stay in a cocoon like what their parents provided for them...forever.  "Snowflakes" is the term often applied to many of them.

The Sanders left also has a deep distrust for the financial, academic, and cultural elites, whereas the establishment left is more than tied to the institutions that these elites dominate.  They are those institutions.  The BSC also resents big corporations, Wall Street, and the media.  Again, these entities are mainstays of the Democratic Party.

This is not to say there isn't considerable overlap between the BSC and the Pelosi-Schumer Democratic Party.  There is on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, gun control, tax-the-rich, gender flexibility, weak religious faith, and the like, but not so much on immigration. 

As to trade and tariffs, the Sanders left is anti-globalism and against what is commonly called free trade.  It's not for nothing that Sanders himself has come out in support of Trump's efforts to rearrange the trading system to be more in alignment with American interests.  He even tacitly said he supports Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs. 

The BSC has even more overlap with Trump.  The Millennials are decidedly against nation-building and foreign adventures.  And they view the Washington swamp with complete disdain because they see the swamp as being elitist and a drag on their aspirations. 

There will never be a political marriage between Donald Trump and crazy Bernie.  But that doesn't preclude many of the BSC sneaking under the sheets to find warm comfort in the Trump agenda.  Why?  Because although the Millennials have been indoctrinated from kindergarten through college with the dogmas of liberalism, self-interest will eventually prevail.  

The Millennials are young.  They want decent careers and a chance for the lifestyle their parents had.  It may take them some time, but sooner or later, it will dawn on many (not all) of them that the only chance to obtain that is with Trump's MAGA agenda and not the policies of the Democratic Party.   

Some might argue that the allure of the free lunch of socialism will tightly tether the BSC to the left.  No doubt it will for a number of them.  But for many others, they will come to see Barack Obama's "Life of Julia" for the lie it is.  The Millennials will realize in time that 1) only so many can fit in the hammock of government dependency before it breaks and 2) socialism can never expanded America's wealth; it can only diminish it, as it has everywhere it has been tried.

Critics of my view will point out news headlines that show the BSC disrupting colleges and screaming in the streets as proof of the hopelessness of the Millennials.  But ask yourself: who is presenting those pictures?  It's the liberal media, and as always, the media have an agenda.  Just like the dishonest polls the media peddle, here the media are attempting to form opinion rather than report.

Don't misunderstand.  I am not saying that such disruptions don't take place.  What I am saying is that they are unrepresentative of the greater Millennial population.  When conservatives like Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, and Ben Shapiro get hooted down at a campus event, the lynch mob is not students in a STEM or business program.  Neither are they college jocks, ex-servicemen in college, or students working to pay their tuition.  If the disruptors are students at all, they come for the most part from the small whackadoodle departments on campus, egged on by a left-wing professor.  Some protesters might even have Soros money in their pockets.  As is always the case, the media will never give the public a true picture. 

The BSC will surely not come out en masse for Trump in 2020.  But neither will they be there as a monolithic voting bloc, as, say, blacks are, for any establishment Democrat.  To capture more of the BSC or at last to dissuade them from voting the Democrat line as happened in 2016, Trump does not have to accommodate their socialistic proclivities.  He merely has to keep hammering away at jobs and target messages to the Millennials of how MAGA improves the economic environment and opportunities for them.  It's all going to come down to the economy.  My betting is that Trump can do it.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.