The only thing the talking heads want to talk about, besides Trump, are all the Democrats running to replace Trump. And which of them has got the best chance of doing so. So many that you need a kind of taxonomic chart to keep them straight.

First in the hearts of the zealots are the utopian democratic socialists hoping to turn the United States into Sweden or Denmark. Trump and the Republicans are drooling at the opportunities for mockery and demonization. Bernie leads this pack, but there are others who lean in the utopian direction including Jay Inslee, the climate change candidate. They may be right, but will a majority vote for them?

Then there are evangelical grievance mongers and rainbow riders who want to redress historic wrongs inflicted on minorities, women, the LGBTQ community, and so on. They are less interested in reforming government than the minds of their countrymen. A noble aspiration, but not a route to the White House.

Like the utopians, the evangelists offer a target rich environment for Trump’s mockery and fear-mongering. One or the other of them will take away your jobs, cars, airplanes, electricity, paychecks, bathrooms, religion or supremacy.

The Purple People are moderates from swing states who will try to sell a slow evolution to a better world in order not to spook voters who could go either way and decide the outcome. They overlap with the efficiency experts or managers, candidates who will promise to make the railroads run on time or to tame the lions of Washington.

These will focus on cleaning up the mess on the Potomac and making the federal government perform as it is supposed to. Ex-governor’s and mayors and business guys will make this pitch. But they are likely to have a tinge of skim milk about them, when the what the party needs is a shot-and-beer kind of candidate to take on Trump. Can we imagine Beto and other cute candidates rising to the challenge? Nice guys finish last as Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale,Gore and others have learned.

The best choice may actually be a democratic populist, a kind of Trumpian figure, but one who does not aspire to autocracy, means what he says, and really hopes to improve the lot of the average Joe rather than con him. This would give such a candidate a two pronged attack.

First, to be for all the sensible things Trump opposes — defensive alliances, trade that allows us to sell profitably our products abroad and buy inexpensively products we need, a proactive approach to climate change rather than denial, equal treatment for all, the rule of law, economically advantageous immigration reform.

Second, to enact all the reasonable policies that Trump promised and then reneged on. A detailed attack on his fraudulent claims, broken promises, and hypocrisy if done energetically could force him to play defense rather than offense.

The millions who fell for Trump’s faux populist pitch were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it any more. They resented the loss of the American Dream. They worked hard, but the money trickled up, not down to them. Wages were stagnant, college unaffordable, life a rigged game where the rich got richer and everyone else slid backwards.

These were people with two jobs, whose plants closed or moved abroad. People who lost their homes to mortgage predators and Wall Street crooks. People with kids in terrible schools, healthcare that is unaffordable or that ties them to jobs they despise. People stuck in decaying parts of the country that have been left behind and forgotten. People who resent an immigration system that allows highly profitable corporations to import third world engineers and pay them less than Americans with the same credentials.

Trump promised to fix all that two years ago, but the performance hasn’t matched the rhetoric. Instead of leveling the playing field or reforming the immigration system to protect American jobs, he has demonized aspiring immigrants on the basis of ethnicity and treated families fleeing oppression and violence at home to seek asylum to inhumane treatment here. All while he has employed illegal immigrants at his hotels and golf resorts so he can pay them less than the minimum wage. Obviously, he is part of the problem, not the solution.

He promised to give the working class giant tax cuts and instead gave 80 percent to the top ten percent, to greedy people like him. He promised to balance the budget and instead has exploded the deficit that will haunt the children of his voters for decades to come. He promised to get them affordable health care and has instead tried to gut the Affordable Care Act with nothing to put in its place.

He promised to preserve Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and proposes a budget that would slash all three. He promised to replace our rotting infrastructure with brand new beautiful roads, bridges, airports. He has done zero. Schools? Nothing. Income inequality? Worse. Opioid Epidemic? Nada. Jobs or job retraining? Zilch. Fixing unfair trade practices by China? Tariffs that are beggaring farmers and costing consumers more. Instead of really reforming trade, foreign policy, our alliances, our economy, Trump has thrown one monkey wrench after another in the works.

There is obviously an opening for a Democrat to run on many of the same issues as Trump did but to offer real solutions instead of arm-waving, campaign-rally fake news. The young, the green, minorities, educated women, progressives will surely vote for the Democrat in preference to Trump, but the traditional Democratic base voters — blue collar, working class, union — need to be persuaded the party still cares about their issues.

That argues for a candidate that can speak to them with authenticity. Unfortunately Sherrod Brown has decided not to run, Biden, Bernie, Warren and Klobuchar have got some credibility on such issues. But mere lip service won’t do. Brie-eating, technocratic, sensitive, snowflake children of privilege unaccustomed to the rough and tumble need not apply.

A winning Trump foe will need to not just make a better case for addressing the issues of those who think the system has left them behind, but also relentless expose the fraudulence of Trump’s claim to care about the plight of the forgotten. A happy but implacable warrior, a gleeful truth-teller able to strip the bark off Trump is what the party needs to nominate.