It’s time to stop pointing and laughing at the Republican primary. For all the GOP front-runner’s flaws, many veteran Democrats are beginning to conclude, Donald Trump is a canny operator who just might end up in the White House if they’re not careful.

He appears to be cracking the code with white working-class voters who could help him put blue Rust Belt states in play against Hillary Clinton. He’s helping to fuel record turnout in GOP primaries and he’s mastered the media like no candidate in recent memory, with his constant feeding of catnip to cable TV and his 140-character missiles on Twitter.


“It’s fair to say there’s been a graveyard already out there of people underestimating him,” said Doug Sosnik, a former Bill Clinton White House adviser. “And I am old enough to remember the sort of Democratic intelligentsia that was hoping Ronald Reagan would be nominated by Republicans in 1980 because everyone knew he was a doddering old right winger who could never get elected president.”

“So there is some danger to underestimating his candidacy,” Sosnik said. "Having said that, I have enough confidence in the judgment of the American people to never elect someone like Donald Trump president of the United States."

Tracy Sefl, a Democratic consultant who was a senior adviser for Ready for Hillary, said Trump was the most dangerous Republican candidate to come out of the primary because he’s “unpredictable, shameless, unapologetic” — and utilizes a non-strategy strategy that has so far worked for him.

“He doesn’t do defense. He’s immune to any sort of fundamentals of campaigning. He’s just doing it his way,” she said.

It’s a mistake to dismiss Trump's appeal against Hillary Clinton, other Democrats have concluded, especially as he continues to roll up wins across the map on his march to the Republican nomination.

“I think Trump could beat her like a tied-up billy goat,” said Mudcat Saunders, a rural Democratic strategist who’s supporting Bernie Sanders. “There are many areas in key swing states like Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that look like Sherman went through and didn’t burn anything. Empty factories, empty buildings, few opportunities for young people. It’s sad. It should be no surprise to anybody that voters in those areas are gravitating to Trump.”

While most Democrats continue to view their party's front-runner as the favorite to win — including for the simple reason that they believe it’s easier for many voters to picture Clinton in charge of the nuclear codes — there’s still a nagging fear that Trump might prove more competitive in some areas than anyone could have imagined.

“I think that’s a likely possibility: that Hillary Clinton could beat Donald Trump by an unheard of margin, nationally, of 6 to 10 points,” President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe recently told Glenn Thrush’s “Off Message” podcast. “But if that’s not the case and he’s competitive, where he’ll be competitive is in the Upper Midwest, in the Ohios, the Wisconsins, maybe Pennsylvanias of the world — maybe Iowa and Minnesota even, potentially.”

Losing any of those states would force the Democratic nominee to scramble to fill in the gaps in the 2016 map.

“You look at Wisconsin, you look at Ohio ... You go up to Appleton, the Paper Valley, Green Bay, where we’ve lost a lot of paper manufacturing jobs — the modern economy is still catching up in Wisconsin,” said former Wisconsin Democratic state party chairman Mike Tate. “It’s tough, and I do worry that Trump has some sort of appeal.”

The combination of historic political disruption and widespread feelings of economic insecurity worry those who see signs that Trump is harnessing powerful undercurrents.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2.1-million strong Service Employees International Union, told David Axelrod’s “Axe Files” podcast recently that Trump is “touching this vein of the terrible anxiety that working-class people feel about their current status, but more importantly, how terrified they are for their kids not being able to do as well as they have, never mind doing better.”

Some hard-hit areas may be especially receptive to Trump’s message.

“Any place that has had manufacturing job declines, they’re very sensitive to immigration, they’re very sensitive to policies that they believe favor corporations and not them,” said Chicago Democratic operative Tom Bowen, a Rahm Emanuel political alum. “I do wonder if there’s some level of white voter that hasn’t come out in the past, a guy like Romney they thought was outsourcing their job, whereas a guy like Trump, they might actually believe that he’ll slap tariffs on Chinese imports and Mexican imports.”

The prospect that Trump might turn out new voters who are highly motivated and not on anyone’s radar can’t be ignored, said Doug Rubin, a Democratic strategist who’s advised Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

"One thing that scares me the most about Trump is the fact that every one of these Republican primaries to date has record turnout. And I think a large part of that, though not all of that, but a large part of that is that Trump is bringing out people who don't normally vote, and adding to the Republican mix on those things and so I worry that in the general election along with the traditional Republican voters that he has the opportunity to bring out a chunk of voters that don't normally vote in those elections and in some elections that could tip the scales,” he said.

Former John Kerry adviser Bob Shrum also pointed to Trump’s ability to generate enthusiasm — and loyalty — among low-propensity and non-ideological voters.

“He’s speaking to a group of people for whom conservatism is not a set of principles and programs, but a collection of grievances, alienations and angers,” he said. “And he expresses that and they’re not going to leave him unless he does something really atrocious.”

But Shrum cautioned that he doesn’t think Trump can get the share of the white vote high enough to overcome what will be a solid minority vote against him.

“It will make Romney look like the king of Cinco de Mayo,” he said.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who this week released a report on "The GOP Civil War and Its Opportunities," said one important general election advantage Trump would have is that he’s seen as wanting to “throw out the money” in politics. And the image that he cultivates as a candidate who isn’t beholden to anybody lets him speak to voters who may be bothered by Clinton’s ties to Wall Street or her refusal to release her Goldman Sachs speech transcripts.

“We have a tendency to underestimate non-traditional candidates,” said a Democratic strategist who does work for the DNC but not the Clinton campaign. “Jesse Ventura got elected governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor. These were non-political figures that had a resonant political message at a certain time in history and they found an audience.”

Daniel Strauss contributed.

Read Politico Playbook: www.politico.com/playbook

Subscribe to Politico Playbook: http://politi.co/1M75UbX