Run Stormy run! A porn star for president? Why not?

“Should I run for president?” Stormy Daniels asked the Tribune over the weekend, during her sweep into Chicago to perform at the Admiral Theatre strip club.

Daniels, in case you are fortunate enough not to already be vastly familiar with every detail of her lubricious life, is the adult film star who … “had an affair” is the euphemism du jour, but that overstates the case. This isn’t exactly “Anna Karenina” we’re talking about, is it? The pneumatic porn princess who screw … whoops, family newspaper … who had sex a dozen years ago with Donald Trump.

“God no!” was my immediate reaction — something of a mantra at this point. Nearly 18 months into the Trump presidency, Democrats have descended into the curl-up-in-a-fetal-position-and-screech-“No!” phase of our torment under the daily, if not hourly lash of lies, accusations and lurching departures from tradition and humanity, all in a monsoon downpour of Republican malice.

Last week’s summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un seems a hundred years ago, as outcry builds against the children of asylum seekers — and this is a country built, remember, by asylum seekers — being stripped from their parents and herded into makeshift detention camps, part of a policy of cruelty designed to keep refugees from seeking shelter at our borders. The horror and shame of this situation is …

Maybe I’m being hasty, dismissing the prospect of a Stormy Daniels presidency. It could happen. She is a Republican. And if nothing else, Republicans have established they will not only tolerate but celebrate, well, just about anything, provided it is done by a fellow Republican, particularly one named Trump. Explode the national debt? Check. Scuttle health care? Double check. Embrace a shunned global pariah and declare his vague general assurances as hard-won, binding commitments? Please sir, may I have another! The aforementioned human rights atrocity at the border? Well, if it discourages immigration … (So would burning the children alive in front of their parents. Maybe that’s coming. And if you huffily insist that’s impossible, remember “impossible” now happens daily at 4 o’clock. So you’d better come up with a better retort.)

Do you think videos of screaming children aflame in iron cages would affect the president’s popularity? I’m not sure. He could just say it was a joke, the way he shrugged off telling a Fox News reporter he wants the American people — “my people” in Trump’s words — to “sit up at attention” when he speaks, the way the starved, terrorized population of North Korean has been brutalized into doing on command. A shame Lincoln didn’t think of the “just kidding” defense when he was condemned for suspending the writ of habeas corpus early in the Civil War.

Trump’s approval rating among Republicans during the first week of June was 90 percent, according to Gallup. Among Democrats it was 8 percent. That gaping divide explains the state of the country right now: half happy in their Fox News-created dreamworld, their grinning mouths smeared with pie. And half staggering from shock to shock, Edvard Munch’s “Scream” frozen on our faces. Trapped in a single, endless moment, the eternal Now, as in all really terrible nightmares.

Though Daniels is a woman, quite obviously. Not a deal-breaker, necessarily. The typical Republican contempt for women that so supercharged their opposition to Hilary Clinton could vanish in the general amnesty they grant themselves. They could spin her as not merely a woman, a flesh bag for putting babies in, but also a savvy businesswoman, who could be counted on to monetize our struggling nation the way she monetized that quickie in a hotel room in Nevada.

“The terrifying thing is I might win,” Daniels said, with a laugh. True, though right now there are dozens of other grim realities vying to be “The Terrifying Thing.” It’s hard to pick just one.

How can the Democrats take the edge off their terror? Not much I can offer besides: register to vote and wait. Robert Mueller will eventually deliver some jaw-dropping indictment of Donald Trump who will, of course, dismiss the whole thing as a conspiracy — he’s doing that daily already — and his 90 percent of Republicans will nod vigorously in unanimous agreement.

Maybe Stormy Daniels will challenge Trump in 2020 and win. Impossible? No. Improbable? Sure. A joke? Certainly. So was “President Donald Trump,” once. But not anymore.

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