I feel like I’ve seen this movie before. Watching Donald Trump’s insurgent campaign for the U.S. Republican presidential nomination, I keep getting scary flashbacks to Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard) in 2010.

The outsider mocked for both nonsensical statements and physical characteristics (Ford’s weight, Trump’s hair), shouting rage against the establishment and sucking up all the headlines. The wealthy man whose presumed authenticity creates a feeling of personal attachment among many working-class voters. The series of apparently campaign-ending outrageous statements that only lead to increased polling numbers.

As was the case with Ford early in 2010, there has already been an avalanche of pieces from the pundits dismissing Trump: this guy’s a clown, they say; he has no friends among movers and shakers, they say; he has no chance to win, they say.

To my American friends, I say: be careful. The parallels with Ford have limits, obviously, but Toronto learned from hard experience that you can live to regret waving off the populist clown candidate. And as weird an adventure as Ford turned out to be for Toronto and for worldwide fans of late-night comedy, a Trump presidency would be exponentially more ridiculous, and potentially disastrous for the entire world. I mean, can you imagine this guy in negotiations with Iran or Russia or North Korea? Holding his finger over the nuclear button while shouting, “You’re a loser, and you’re fired!”

You laugh now. That may be a mistake.

“He can win this thing,” said Nick Kouvalis, a political consultant who was the architect of Ford’s 2010 victory, when I called him to ask about Trump.

“He’s just got to stay on message. He’s got to show Republicans that he’s connecting with ethnocultural, blue-collar and low-income constituencies. If he can show that, he’ll win the nomination,” Kouvalis said, adding that for an anti-establishment candidate like Trump, going head to head with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is a dream matchup.

I called Kouvalis because I wanted to know if I was alone in feeling that this all looked familiar. “I think there are some similarities to the Ford campaign,” he said, noting the penchant for saying things that “are not politically correct but are on a lot of people’s minds as well,” the anti-establishment tone, the zeroing in on broad themes the other candidates are uncomfortable with. As well, voters see Trump “much like they saw Ford, as a successful businessman who’s lived the Canadian dream, or the American dream.”

Kouvalis notes there are some big differences between the men, however. “Ford spent 10 years as an elected official returning people’s phone calls,” he said. “Trump doesn’t have that. That’s a big difference, so at a presidential level, Trump hasn’t been making the phone calls to Republican party delegates. He hasn’t done that.” Indeed, Ford’s direct personal connection to tens of thousands of voters was often credited — including by me — with establishing his loyal base and their conviction that he was a guy they could trust.

I wonder if Trump’s long public career, including as a TV personality, serves a similar function, establishing him as a big-mouthed, extravagant hyperbolist, providing bona fides in the minds of those who can see he’s still the same outrageous guy running for office.

Another difference Kouvalis sees is also a sort of parallel. “I know people won’t believe this, thinking about Ford’s last two years in office, but if you go back to 2010, Rob Ford was quite humble. And Trump is not,” he said with significant understatement. “And that’s what’s gonna be, probably, the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Ford, despite his reputation as a hothead, was a message machine in 2010, mindlessly repeating his slogans and talking points for months on end. It was personal problems — especially with alcohol and substance abuse — that eventually led to his downfall. One that Kouvalis says happened when his administration started becoming more about him and his family than about their message and political mission.

No one suspects Trump of having similar skeletons in his closet, but his ego has emerged as a potential monkey on his back. “He did (stay on his message) in the beginning, and he did it very well, and he went from being a nobody and a non-contender to being a somebody and a contender,” said Kouvalis.

“But that seems to have gone to his head. I mean, his top campaign adviser (Roger Stone) is gone. Trump says he fired him, Stone says he quit. I believe Stone. But Stone says he quit primarily because Donald got off his messages and started making this about his ego and about himself.”

But Kouvalis thinks Trump needs only to adjust course to stay on top of the field. And possibly become leader of the free world. “I think he has a chance if he can get back on message and get focused on the issues and get off of himself.”

Barring a crack scandal, the Ford example doesn’t offer a lot of advice for effectively opposing Trump. Ford’s opponents hoped calling him a clown and waiting for him to implode under the weight of outrageous comments and lack of gravitas would work. Instead, they had to wait for Ford to essentially destroy himself. Toronto suffered under his leadership in the meantime.

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America: you’ve been warned.

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