Democrats hope to beat Trump with own words

Campaign officials believe strategy is ‘a no-brainer.’

PHILADELPHIA — Every night here at the Democratic National Convention, the video clips appeared on the giant screens above the arena floor.

“Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing.”

“You’re going to have a deportation force.”

“A total and complete shutdown of Muslims in the United States.”

On their biggest stage yet, Democrats brandished what they believe is their most powerful weapon against Donald Trump: His own words.

Again and again, the campaign hurled his most offensive phrases out into the ether: in flashing videos, in speeches, and even during the commercial breaks, in TV ads in battleground states.

Campaign officials believe the strategy is a no-brainer. Focus groups and public opinion polls show huge swaths of voters turned off by Trump’s pronouncements: immigrants, minorities, women, the disabled.

But the tactic carries risk. A lot of people like what Trump says; he emerged from the Republican convention in Cleveland last week even with or ahead of Clinton in several polls. Where some critics see behavior unbecoming a president, many voters see a willingness to take on political correctness and upend longstanding norms. It’s the reason they’re voting for them.

And Clinton is putting to the test a theory that was already proven wrong once.

During primary season, Trump’s Republican opponents were certain that Trump’s insult-hurling style would doom his path to the nomination. They were wrong.

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign and a longtime GOP pollster, said in an interview this week that voters are so upset with the status quo — and so mistrustful of Clinton — that “distrust will trump distaste.”

“Those are the voters who may have once prioritized tone and temperament,” she said. “Now, their priorities have changed. What’s going on is so bad, the angst is so real, that people are willing to take the chance.”

Clinton is not trying to change hearts or minds among voters who like what Trump has to say. Rather, it’s to repackage his words and hurl them at strategically important blocs of voters in battleground states, so they are constantly exposed to the Trump words they find most offensive — and motivated to vote against him. Democrats say it’s a tactic his Republican opponents failed to execute.

A recent spot called “Role Model” shows young children watching as Trump voices insults and profanity on a television screen.

It is aimed at suburban families, mothers in particular, who the Clinton campaign believes are prime targets in this election.

For Latino audiences, no line is more potent, Democrats believe, than Trump’s claim that undocumented Mexican immigrants include criminals and rapists.

“My father is not a criminal or a rapist, in fact, he’s a United States veteran,” said Latina actress Eva Longoria on Monday night.

Then, minutes after video footage of Trump mocking a disabled reporter played, Anastasia Somoza came onto the stage in her wheelchair.

“Donald Trump has shown us who he really is,” Somoza said. “And I honestly feel bad for anyone with that much hate in their heart.”

An ad from the super PAC Priorities USA, about a disabled child named Grace, hammered home the same point.

“The children at Grace’s school all know never to mock her,” Lauren Glaros, an Ohio woman whose child has a disability, says in the ad. “And so for an adult to mock someone with a disability, it is shocking.”

There was no subtlety in these messages, and that was the goal. The pitch is straightforward: Donald Trump is who he says he is.

“I don’t think you can find any Republican who can defend some of the stuff that Donald Trump is saying,” said Jamie Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

The party faithful in the convention hall needed no convincing.

“Your word really identifies who you are and what you believe,” said Jeion Ward, 62, a delegate from Virginia and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. “He wouldn’t really say that if he didn’t believe it, right?”