analogize

To express as an analogy.

The teacher analogised swotting for an exam in terms of marathon training.

To treat one thing as analogous to another.

Repulsion over polygamy is so ingrained in the American consciousness — analogizing it to slavery, the Republican platform of 1856 called it one of the country’s “twin relics of barbarism” — that judgmentally reveling in the exotic perversions of “Big Love” feels like something on the order of a national right.

Cruz was obviously analogizing Bernie Sanders to the Bolsheviks and Hillary Clinton to the Mensheviks. The oleaginous Texan is an erudite slyboots, but his history is off-kilter.