DEMS TRY TO FIND RIGHT MESSAGE ON TRUMP
Not all of party’s potential voters are motivated by him
Nick Ahamed has seen both the potential and the challenge Democrats will face next year when they invoke former President Donald Trump’s name on the campaign trail.
The deputy executive director of Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, was conducting research this month on Americans who had never cast a ballot before voting for President Joe Biden in 2020.
One of the findings was particularly glaring: When presented with a message about Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Ahamed said White voters in this group ranked it the third-most effective out of 25 overall messages. But voters of color ranked it 16th — a racial divide that persisted on other questions about Trump.
In other words, Trump was an invaluable tool to turn out part of the Democratic base, Ahamed said, but not all of it.
“There is not a one-sizefits-all approach on the way to engage on this,” Ahamed said. “Different voters have different experiences and attitudes. And we need to be targeted in our messaging around that.”
In the aftermath of a shocking defeat in the Virginia
governor’s race in November, some Democrats criticized gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe and party leaders for focusing too much on Trump, arguing that the former president is disconnected from voters’ everyday concerns.
But party strategists insist that dropping Trump from their message would likely be a big mistake during the 2022 midterm elections, arguing that his ongoing influence on the GOP and uniquely polarizing presence make him a political tool Democrats can’t afford to ignore.
Backed by research from Priorities USA and other groups, Democratic strategists also add that any use of Trump must be done carefully, balancing the unique way he can energize some core voters with an awareness that he won’t resonate as powerfully with other potential supporters, even
some Democrats.
“It’s complicated. It’s not yay or nay,” said Marshall Cohen, political director of the Democratic Governors Association, which was deeply involved in the Virginia race. “And I think part of our analysis from Virginia is that the Trump message did motivate a lot of Democrats to come out and vote.
”So there is real power with that run message for a lot of our base,“Cohen added.
Cohen said he saw evidence in the DGA’s own research that a Trump-focused message resonated less with voters of color, though he said it still did well overall to energize and persuade them. He also emphasized that while a Trump message tests well now, the dynamic could change by the November elections.
How Democrats handle Trump next year will be just the latest chapter in an ongoing challenge that has flummoxed the party.
In 2016, then-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the rest of the party focused heavily on Trump’s personal character, an approach that was blamed in part for his victory.
Democrats had more success in 2018, sidelining Trump in much of their messaging in favor of hammering Republicans for trying to remove health insurance protections for patients with pre-existing conditions. And in 2020, Biden framed the election as a referendum on both what Trump’s presidency meant for the nation’s moral character and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Other presidents who have exited the White House, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have watched their political relevance quickly fade.
Democrats say that unlike other presidents who have exited the White House, Trump’s unprecedented and false insistence that he won the 2020 election and the perceived likelihood that he’ll run for president again in 2024 make him relevant to voters.
”It’s about being smart about the medium,” said Sacha Haworth, a Democratic strategist. ”Maybe you don’t want to blast Trump’s face all over TV, you just want to remind folks that a vote for this Republican is a vote for Trump’s agenda, insofar as they’re too afraid to stand up to him in Congress.“