EDITOR’S COLUMN: Maybe The Donald and Bernie were in cahoots

From the beginning, there was a widely circulated theory that Donald Trump’s candidacy was actually a conspiracy of collusion with Hillary Clinton to decimate the Republican field and open wide her path to the presidency.

Facebook memes with old photos showing Trump at black tie affairs with the Clintons, coupled with The Donald’s surgical, ruthless and often childish attacks on GOP contenders made the theory seem not so implausible that he was doing it on someone else’s behalf.

After Tuesday night, it all seems rather ludicrous and paranoid, but maybe there was a fair bit of collusion — albeit unintentional — after all.

Maybe, as Trump was bullying his way through the Republican field as the most juvenile of juggernauts, it occurred to him that he actually could win the whole thing. Maybe he looked over at what Bernie Sanders was doing in the Democratic primary and realized all the scouting and heavy lifting was being done for him.

Think about it, as all his Republican opponents were painting Hillary as some far-left socialist, Trump never attacked her like that. He attacked her instead as a capitalist fat cat in bed with Wall Street.

Bernie did that first, demanding to see transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs.

While Trump’s Republican opponents extolled the virtues of low taxes, small government and big business, Trump instead proposed huge tariffs on international trade, painting the Clintons as greedy capitalists and linking Hillary to her husband’s unpopular NAFTA legislation.

Bernie had been ripping her vote on the Pan-Pacific trade deal long before that.

Every Republican, including Trump, vowed to undo Obamacare if elected, and yet somehow maintain its most popular attributes — the biggest being protection of those with pre-existing medical conditions — without ever explaining how. Trump came the closest to offering some idea, pointing to the usurious insurance premiums some states allow. As president, he would use the federal government to trample state’s rights and regulate them all under one code.

Sounds like a step more in the direction of Bernie’s socialized medicine than giving it back to the private sector.

Bernie also taught Trump something he might not have fully appreciated before he got into the race — that he could beat Hillary without having to worry about racial matters. Though he never got any real support from minority groups, Bernie still almost won the nomination, and it could be argued didn’t lose it so much as he ran out of time.

Bernie’s rallies of tens of thousands of mostly white kids told Trump he didn’t have to even feign sensitivity on racial matters.

And as election day approached, Trump went to Bernie’s playbook one more time, using exactly the argument Bernie used to say the nomination was being stolen from him by a biased DNC and unfair voter registration requirements. Trump applied that to the general election as doubt about the nebulous system, as a whole, being ‘rigged.’

That got his voters to the polls the same way it did Bernie’s.

Last Friday night I was on the phone with a friend and Bernie supporter. Like many Bernie backers, she was growing very concerned about increasing bigotry and hatred in the country that Trump had become the poster child for.

I told her not to worry because Trump was going to lose on Tuesday — all the polls said so.

Then she texted, “Remember the 5th of November.”

“Huh?”

She sent a trailer of the film “V for Vendetta” and I replied, “Oh for Fawkes sake.”

The deeper meaning of that didn’t dawn on me until late on election night. I was listening to Alaska NPR while waiting for the results of the state races to come oozing in, when the host decided tokill time by taking some calls.

A young woman from Juneau called in, her voice shaking, about to crack under tears. She expressed many of the same fears my friend did, and now that Trump was the president-elect she was scared for her country. The host then asked who she voted for and she said ‘Jill Stein.’

And there you have it.

Bernie backers wanted to blow the whole thing up just the same as Trump voters, except they believed that if their guy did it, it would be noble and if the other guy did it it would be abhorrent.

Three days after Guy Fawkes day, Parliament was blown into a million pieces by the only candidate left in the race who could push the plunger.

Really, that’s the mandate. The rest is just a matter of taste.