Written by Robert S. Becker   

Early on, facile, pro-Donald pundits linked the Trump and Sanders candidacies. Many leftists followed, mesmerized by any conspicuous insurgency against entrenchment. As the notion is less true now than then, how amazing this fable doesn't invite weekly corrective eruptions. It's not as if core agendas overlap. Quite the opposite, as tone, values and policy disparities swamp superficial linkages. Amidst staggering, mind-bending campaign lying, defamation, and chicanery, time to expose this needless distortion that bashes Sanders' historic importance.

One decisive, incontestable difference: Trump's nomination per current polling demolishes the nation's most dominant party, jeopardizing its WH and Senate chances, perhaps vaunted House majority, with ripples across countless state races. If Trump fulfills this doom and gloom scenario, that welcome implosion brings down the GOP's House of Reagan. Sanders as nominee not only doesn't fracture the Democratic Party but revitalizes a broken, cowardly party with new and young, sustainable, grassroots support. What else truly matters over time?

Mystified by Trump's opening surge, talking heads searched out patterns: one on the left, one on the right got cobbled together because they appear to indict the status quo (as if one clear thing). Don't both confront "establishment" hegemony and voice small-fry "populism" plus reject bad trade agreements, hard times, and Washington insiders? Both appear to question military fiascos (though in wholly different terms). Sanders certainly threatens national and party power centers; Trump, aggressive rhetoric aside, is a wrecking ball against how the GOP works, not how the world or Main St. work. How many billionaires and insiders fear Trump's wealth addiction or privileged stardom in the rich and famous echelon?

Appearances vs. Reality

True, in one season two improbable upstarts confront party favorites, engage less active voters, and foment noisy protests, even a "political revolution." Typical after a two-term presidency without clear, popular heirs. But Trump is stylistically a deviant (quasi-liberal) Republican, while Sanders resurrects the strongest, reform Democratic legacy, the culmination of the Progressive Era spanning Wilson-FDR-LBJ. Trumpery wants to chainsaw his adopted party, Bernie to revitalizes the best, most progressive Democratic triumphs.

That's why hordes of rock-ribbed Republicans can't stand Trump (beyond the doomsday electoral dread) because he's no true conservative, amplified by his arrogant, rich-kid style and shotgun belligerence. How many Democratic stalwarts denounce Sanders' idealistic politics (however hard to pull off) or declare him unqualified? Few to none. Yet savvy leftists still echo Trump-Sanders parallels, per this dicey Salon headline, "Hey, Democrats, stop gloating -- your party is imploding right before your eyes, too."

The clear record exposes profound opposition, especially what matters most: the mindsets that would orchestrate WH administrations. No surprise, considering how their backgrounds, experience and philosophies radically differ, let alone that one offers workable solutions and Trump, contempt, condescension and sound bite verbiage. Can anyone imagine Sanders echoing Trump this weekend, "If I acted presidential, I guarantee you I wouldn't be here"?

Run America Like a Business

Trump is an egocentric, hustling entertainer whose own media dominance surpasses his initial fantasies. Only now is this undisciplined amateur hiring (dueling) professionals to reverse astronomical disapproval numbers. Trump is a billionaire braggart whose empty motto -- make America great again -- promises salvation but with knee-jerk GOP memes: reduce taxes, banish federal waste, corruption and regulatory interference (discredited job creators) -- all orchestrated by super-rich tycoons running the US as a for-profit corporation.

Don't worry about Democrats or Congress or the Courts, Trump declares: all will cower before his personal magnetism and negotiating genius, delivering riches beyond the dreams of avarice. A virtual Trump coup d'etat thanks to his magic Midas touch -- or more darkly, a velvet glove over a merciless iron fist, with the Trump Oligarchy Parade in full charge. Delete Trumpster wars on immigrants, women, and Muslims, and all that remains, the "business of America is business."

Sanders could not be more different: an unassuming, leftwing movement-maker who targets corrupt big business as the enemy, proposing government as the only real offset. Sanders follows compassionate progressivism that views unfair taxation and corporate welfare as enriching the 1% at everyone else's expense (literally). Clearly, Sanders' vision is opposite to Trump's hypnotic gestures -- to awaken the collective, 99% how its self-interest is battered by reckless bankers and the 50 CEOs running the most injurious oil, mining, chemical and industrial powerhouses.

Sanders' Enemy: Profits Above People

While Sanders defies the oppressive status quo, he refuses to fabricate an addled cult of personality. Opposite to Trump's bizarre magic thinking with its instant payoffs, Sanders argues systemic reform is a hard, long, collective quest. Trump obscures the "status quo" he detests, using it as scapegoat symbol for his fear-mongering gloom and doom. Sander claims no messianic powers; Trump offers himself as the no-cost savior only a truly stupid country would dare reject.

Does Trump indict inequality or the god-given privilege of fat cats to accumulate as much treasure as possible? Does Trump not defend the fraudulent "free market" that concentrates wealth by taking it from the middle and working classes? Does Trump indict state subsidies in housing (which enriched him) or for oil and mining firms? Or restrain the world's most damaging business, "defense spending," as in arms, proxy warfare and global militarism?

The dubious iconoclast, Trump ridicules Obama's foreign policy as both too much or too little, declaring failed wars haven't kept suspicious Muslims, let alone terrorists, in their place. Aside from threats of massive banishment or reckless violence, Trump has no real-world anti-terrorism program -- beyond "elect me." World safety defaults to the world's “best negotiator,” though fanatics scoff at compromise. For Trump, the Iranian nuclear deal fails for not being punitive, heavy-handed or imperialistic enough, like any tin-pot, saber-rattling monarch disciplining his serfs.

Trump, the Reactionary 'Maverick'

Trump is no maverick here, echoing brutal neocons plus von Clauswitz: that war is simply the continuation of (imperial, exceptionalist) policy by other means. To enemies of American greatness, all bets are off. In Trump's jungle model, it's always us vs. them -- following Rumsfeld-Cheney delusions. Why spend billions on nukes if we never use them?

In fact, Sanders the democratic capitalist-socialist defies the concentrated power that drives Trump's "dominance is all" strongman bluster. Unlike Trump, Sanders wants systemic change of domestic economic priorities and political structures (re taxes and insidious lobbyism), plus a curb on US foreign belligerence. Sanders wants government to be part of the solution while Trump, like Reagan, rails against tyrannical government as the great obstacle to profits and prosperity.

Does anyone believe Trump's worst primary outrages, often indefensible lies, won't face serious, edge-a-sketch "adjustments"? Trump minions concede his faux outrage is an act, done for disruptive mud-slinging. Thus Trump lies with record-breaking frequency; Sanders, say all independent experts, tells more truth than any other current politician.

Differences Doom Trumpitudes

Overall, Sanders looks to temperate "socialism," which Trumpery will mock and slander as full-throated communism. That goes along with glorifying oligarchs, worshipping inequality plus suckering the disadvantaged, fear-based crowd. Sanders’ core appeals to the better angels on the left and center. All "populist" linkages disappear when Sanders' campaign manifestly serves the majority with greater opportunity, education and advancement; Trump is the master illusionist whose policy voids reinforce the very populist grievances on which he plays despite caused by his own billionaire class.

Indeed, Sanders stands for all that Trump hates. Trump is the poster child, the proudly ignorant tycoon, that drives the Sanders movement. Time to banish this highly misleading distortion: Sanders is not like Trump, indeed more like core polar opposites. The unassuming Sanders presents people-oriented messages that widen debate. Trump's proto-fascist, money-driven demagoguery shrinks debate with deceptive, irresponsible war cries. Finally, Trump is the theatrical, front-running top dog out for himself, where “winning” is everything. Spotlight or not, Sanders remains the principled, committed underdog pushing to start a movement, whatever the results of a single election season.