While in public Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBiden says voters should choose who nominates Supreme Court justice Trump, Biden will not shake hands at first debate due to COVID-19 Pelosi: Trump Supreme Court pick 'threatens' Affordable Care Act MORE mocks the idea of socialism, behind closed doors he has reportedly been telling confidants a socialist opponent won’t be “so easy” to beat. And you know what? This might be Donald Trump at his wisest. He should be terrified of a socialist running against him in 2020.

Reports of the American people’s horror at the mere whisper of “socialism” are greatly exaggerated. An August Gallup poll showed Democrats actually feel positive towards socialism than capitalism: 57 percent to 47 percent. 43 percent of those polled in May said socialism was a “good thing for the country.” That’s not just Democrats, by the way.

That’s the American public at large. Socialism might not yet have majority support, but it already has a higher approval rating than Donald Trump does on a good day.

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All of this has developed during a time when the American people are almost never presented with accurate information about socialism or socialist policies. Fox News bounces back and forth between shocking ignorance on the topic and willful misrepresentations.

CNN and MSNBC are little better. How high would those approval numbers be if the American people hadn’t been gaslit about socialism on a daily basis throughout their lives?

Bear in mind, voters won’t be going to the polls thinking about socialism as some abstract concept. They’ll be presented throughout the election with specific policies. There Trump should be even more worried.

Let’s acknowledge first that across much of the world, many of these policies wouldn’t be considered “socialist” at all. It’s a testament to how twisted our political language has become and how far to the right the Overton window has been shifted that common-sense progressive policies are called socialist in the United States by politicians and media outlets that should know better.

The most discussed “socialist” policy in the 2020 cycle, "Medicare for All," regularly polls above 70 percent approval. Far scarier for Trump and the GOP, it has majority support even among Republicans. A passionate advocate for making Medicare universal wouldn’t just fire up the Democratic base and independents, but could even pick off a chunk of the Republican vote. That’s a chunk Donald Trump simply can’t afford to lose.

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It goes beyond healthcare. The Green New Deal, though plagued by pervasive right-wing misinformation almost since its introduction, still polls above 60 percent, and has almost 100 percent approval amongst Democrats, who increasingly will be driven to the polls by concerns over lack of progress on confronting the climate crisis. Free college tuition? Majority approval. Canceling student loan debt? Even more popular. Doubling the top marginal tax rate? More popular than not. Imposing a wealth tax? Above 60 percent approval.

We could go on, but long story short, the last thing a President as historically unpopular as Donald Trump wants is to run against a candidate championing this slate of extraordinarily popular policies. Trump knows this. Hell, Trump has tried to do this himself.

You might recall that Trump flirted with “socialist” policies to help win the Republican primary. On health care, you could be forgiven for thinking he had campaigned on setting up a single-payer system. On 60 minutes he said “I am going to take care of everybody… everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” He sought to differentiate himself on the primary debate stage by saying “We’re going to take care of people who are dying on the street.” This occasional dalliance with socialism didn’t begin in 2015. Way back in 1999, Trump floated a bold plan to reduce the national debt: a one-time 14.5 percent wealth tax on all fortunes over $10 million. That’s the sort of plan that would get him blacklisted from Fox News were he to adopt it in 2019.

He never made good on any of these promises, of course, but as duplicitous as he was, it showed that he understood even then the growing appeal of socialist policies and ideas.

And who will champion these policies? Among the many Democratic primary contenders, no one fits the bill quite like Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersTrump, Biden will not shake hands at first debate due to COVID-19 Sanders tells Maher 'there will be a number of plans' to remove Trump if he loses Sirota reacts to report of harassment, doxing by Harris supporters MORE. That has to have Trump running scared.

He’s never been comfortable going up directly against Bernie Sanders. He rarely mentions him in rallies or tweets. He hasn’t even been able to brand Bernie with one of his trademark nicknames. “Crazy Bernie” is childish and condescending, sure, but it doesn’t have the cachet of a “Low Energy Jeb” or “Lil’ Marco.” It isn’t going to stick. It isn’t going to get the MAGA crowds fired up like a “Crooked Hillary.” Either Trump’s heart isn’t in it, or he fears drawing the attention of Bernie and his massive social media fan base.

And that might be what’s truly lying beneath Donald Trump’s growing anxiety about running against “socialism.” What he fears isn’t just running against a different list of policies but running against a different sort of politician.

Trump clearly relished running against Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonThe Memo: Trump furor stokes fears of unrest Bloomberg rolls out M ad buy to boost Biden in Florida Hillicon Valley: Productivity, fatigue, cybersecurity emerge as top concerns amid pandemic | Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board | Google to temporarily bar election ads after polls close MORE in 2016. He also clearly misses it, since he has tweeted about Clinton more than two hundred times since his inauguration. Clinton rejected the above policies, and so Trump found her easy to brand as an out of touch elite, with him opposing her as the champion of the millions of forgotten American voters. Democrats choosing a centrist candidate in the Clinton tradition would be giving Donald Trump exactly what he wants, putting him back on a battlefield he’s extremely comfortable with.

To add insult to injury, Republicans will end up calling that centrist a socialist anyway. They’ve done it to virtually every Democratic candidate going back a century.

Trump’s worst fear is to be matched up against a candidate like Bernie Sanders. A candidate who understands, as even Donald Trump does, the power and appeal of so-called “socialist” policies.

Now it’s up to the Democrats to decide if they want to make his worst fears come true.

John Iadarola is the host and producer of the daily political news show "The Damage Report" TYT, and co-host on The Young Turks.