The mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary on Down­ing Street is in a cozy Den­ver neigh­bor­hood, tucked amid cof­fee shops, bou­tiques and oth­er arti­facts of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.  Enter­ing the store on a bright Sun­day morn­ing, I’m greet­ed by a glassy-eyed young man slumped in a chair with a large bowl of bud on his lap.  His job, in addi­tion to rolling ju-jus, is to check IDs, turn away minors and iden­ti­fy out-of-staters, whose pur­chas­es are lim­it­ed to one-quar­ter ounce per trans­ac­tion. Col­oradans can legal­ly buy four times that amount, the state’s law­mak­ers evi­dent­ly believ­ing that natives can han­dle their weed bet­ter than non-residents.

His col­leagues behind the counter are in a sim­i­lar­ly ami­ca­ble stu­por, but knowl­edge­able about their prod­uct and full of advice to pre­vent patrons from pulling a Mau­reen Dowd, the New York Times colum­nist who descend­ed into a para­noid delu­sion­al state after lock­ing her­self in a hotel room and wolf­ing down a THC-laced Sky Bar. The del­i­ca­cies at this shop are said to con­tain safe amounts of the active ingre­di­ent, enough to pro­duce a man­age­able eupho­ria that won’t end in an emer­gency room vis­it or inspire anoth­er loopy New York Times col­umn.

There is some­thing vague­ly sur­re­al about get­ting med­ical advice, how­ev­er sound, from peo­ple in a drug-induced haze at ten o’clock in the morn­ing.  The “wake and bake” crew at the mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary fits the car­i­ca­tures that oppo­nents of legal­iza­tion have sketched, mak­ing them a bad adver­tise­ment for their polit­i­cal cause.

Which brings me to Don­ald Trump.

Trump’s genius for self-pro­mo­tion and rein­ven­tion has made him the GOP’s improb­a­ble front-run­ner head­ing into tonight’s com­i­cal­ly crowd­ed debate. He is pop­u­lar among con­ser­v­a­tives, though he is no con­ser­v­a­tive.  His self-ref­er­en­tial can­di­da­cy leaves lit­tle space for pol­i­cy, con­ser­v­a­tive or oth­er­wise.  Data, posi­tion papers and sub­stance are the pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of career politi­cians.  Why entan­gle your­self in com­plex­i­ty when you know the Don­ald can han­dle any­thing the pres­i­den­cy can throw at him?  How would he con­duct for­eign affairs in an increas­ing­ly hos­tile and chaot­ic world?  He’s a good nego­tia­tor who will hire good nego­tia­tors to nego­ti­ate for him. Health care?  He’ll repeal Oba­macare and replace it with “some­thing ter­rif­ic.”  Done and done.

His can­di­da­cy is less polit­i­cal than cul­tur­al.  Trump is the delin­quent rich kid, van­dal­iz­ing the cul­tur­al edi­fice erect­ed by elites in uni­ver­si­ties, gov­ern­ment, Hol­ly­wood, Wall Street and cor­po­rate C‑suites – erect­ed, in oth­er words, by peo­ple of his own social milieu. Trump’s bom­bast is a cal­cu­lat­ed assault on the sen­si­bil­i­ties of Amer­i­can elites, espe­cial­ly those who are ever sniff­ing out “microag­gres­sions,” ver­bal mis­cues that are often of inno­cent intent but that are said to have been belched from hate­ful souls and to have been hurt­ful to one or anoth­er vic­tim group.

That men­tal­i­ty per­me­ates every crevice of pop­u­lar cul­ture. Last month, Col­in Cowherd, an ESPN radio celebri­ty, launched one of his fre­quent screeds against base­ball.  Cowherd’s intend­ed tar­get was a polit­i­cal­ly safe one: old white guys who like base­ball and believe it to be a cere­bral game (me, for exam­ple).  Base­ball, he argued, can’t be intel­lec­tu­al­ly com­plex because “a third of the sport is from the Domini­can Repub­lic,” which, he con­tin­ued, “has not been known in my life­time as hav­ing world-class aca­d­e­m­ic abilities.”

Thus did the shot he fired at white guys inad­ver­tent­ly wound Lati­nos, an eth­nic group with well-estab­lished vic­tim­hood cred.  The out­rage from the griev­ance indus­try was imme­di­ate, pro­vok­ing calls for Cowherd’s scalp.

The next morn­ing, Cowherd announced that he was “not doing a Trump and dou­bling down,” but stopped short of apol­o­giz­ing for his remarks.  Instead he tried to clar­i­fy the point of his excur­sus on the Domini­can edu­ca­tion sys­tem: “You don’t have to be Steven Hawk­ing to under­stand base­ball.”  Hours after the day’s show end­ed, he backed down, tweet­ing a for­mu­la­ic apol­o­gy: “My choice of words was poor and not reflec­tive of who I am.”  By evening, his employ­ers announced that “Col­in will no longer appear on ESPN.”

The famil­iar cycle of statement/explanation/apology/termination played out over a peri­od of rough­ly 30 hours.  Its hypocrisy was fla­grant.  It had been wide­ly report­ed for some time that Cowherd was leav­ing ESPN to join a rival net­work.  His last ESPN broad­cast was to have been a week from the day of his fir­ing.   A con­ve­nient time for the net­work to sud­den­ly dis­cov­er that its long­time on-air per­son­al­i­ty does not “reflect the val­ues of ESPN or our employees.”

The Trump can­di­da­cy is less about mak­ing Amer­i­ca great again than about mak­ing a mock­ery of elites who engage in such moral preen­ing and hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty.  Trump delib­er­ate­ly pro­vokes inter­est groups that hem­or­rhage out­rage more pro­fuse­ly than hemo­phil­i­acs bleed.  (To per­sons with hemo­phil­ia whom I’ve offend­ed: “The pre­ced­ing sen­tence is not reflec­tive of who I am.”)  Oth­ers grov­el and plead for for­give­ness when they inad­ver­tent­ly nick the cap­il­lar­ies of such groups; Trump goes for the carotid.  And then won’t say he’s sorry.

Trump lives to give offense.  There is an audi­ence that thrills to his every out­ra­geous utter­ance, and it is most­ly on the Right, among those who sim­mer over polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and speech codes that have leeched from uni­ver­si­ties into the broad­er cul­tur­al water table.  Just as Bernie Sanders has tapped into dis­af­fec­tion on the Left against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty and its pre­sump­tive 2016 stan­dard-bear­er, Trump attracts much of his fol­low­ing from Repub­li­cans dis­il­lu­sioned with polit­i­cal elites, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of their own par­ty.  Their ranks are grow­ing.  Only 68 per­cent of Repub­li­cans have a favor­able view of their par­ty, accord­ing to a recent Pew Research poll, down from 86 per­cent in January.

And that isn’t the GOP’s biggest prob­lem.  Over­all, twice as many vot­ers view the par­ty unfa­vor­ably as view it favor­ably, accord­ing to the same Pew sur­vey.  That does­n’t mean the pub­lic dis­agrees with Repub­li­cans on the issues.  While Democ­rats have big advan­tages over Repub­li­cans on abor­tion and the envi­ron­ment, Repub­li­cans are more trust­ed to han­dle the bud­get, tax­es, gun con­trol and ter­ror­ism, and are almost dead even with Democ­rats on immi­gra­tion, for­eign pol­i­cy and the economy.

The party’s biggest deficits have less to do with spe­cif­ic issues than with the per­cep­tion that it “isn’t con­cerned with peo­ple like me” (53 per­cent say that is true of Repub­li­cans vs. 31 per­cent who say it is true of Democ­rats) and is “more extreme in its posi­tions” (Repub­li­cans are viewed as more extreme by a 52–35 mar­gin).  Which would make a bil­lion­aire can­di­date who rev­els in immod­er­ate dec­la­ra­tions a par­tic­u­lar­ly unfor­tu­nate choice as standard-bearer.

Trump’s can­di­da­cy rein­forces the worst car­i­ca­tures of Repub­li­cans as angry, abra­sive and far removed from the con­cerns of most Amer­i­cans. Those stereo­types are the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty’s great­est asset, an asset that accrued val­ue when­ev­er Jon Stew­art gri­maced at the men­tion of Ted Cruz or Stephen Col­bert raised an eye­brow in iron­ic defense of Sarah Palin.  Such social cues from a broad array of celebri­ty icons are enough to con­vince many vot­ers that they don’t want to be Repub­li­cans, much less con­ser­v­a­tives, lest they find them­selves adrift from the cul­tur­al mainstream.

Over­com­ing this bias against Repub­li­cans will be dif­fi­cult enough for a par­ty that has won a pop­u­lar vote major­i­ty just once in the last six pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.  The Trump cam­paign won’t help the GOP regain lost ground, any­more than the staff of ston­ers at the Down­ing Street mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary will boost the cam­paign for legalization.

But at least they’re a mel­low, cheer­ful and friend­ly lot.  Trump should take note.