Anti-Trump burnout is hurdle now
Democrats want to vote for something, strategist explains
In 2017 they donned pink hats to march on Washington, registering their fury with then-President Donald Trump by the hundreds of thousands.
Then they flipped the House from Republican control in 2018, won the presidency in 2020 and secured a strong showing in the 2022 midterm elections, galvanized by their conviction that Trump and his allies constituted a national emergency. This year, antiTrump voters are grappling with another powerful sentiment: exhaustion.
“Some folks are burned out on outrage,” said Rebecca Lee Funk, the Washington-based founder of the Outrage, a progressive activism group and a purveyor of resistance-era apparel. “People are tired. I think last election we were desperate to get Trump out of office, and folks were willing to rally around that singular call to action. And this election feels different.”
But for Democrats, the mission is similar: Now defending the White House, President Joe Biden is trying to reassemble that sprawling anti-Trump coalition, casting the 2024 contest as another battle to save American democracy as Trump moves toward the Republican nomination.
Biden, however, has a lot of work to do. Interviews with nearly two dozen Democratic voters, activists and officials make clear his challenge in energizing Americans who are unenthusiastic about a likely 2020 rematch, are worried about his age and, in some cases, are struggling to sustain the searing anger toward Trump that Democrats have relied on for nearly a decade.
“We’re kind of, like, crises-ed out,” said Shannon Caseber, 36, a security guard in Pittsburgh who called the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch a “Dumpster fire. It’s crisis fatigue, for sure.”
Caseber is a Democrat who would back Biden over Trump. “Any sense of urgency that we had with the 2020 election — I think it’s still there in the sense that no one wants Trump to be president, at least for Democrats, but it’s exhausting,” she said.
Democrats are hardly alone in their political fatigue.
A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 65% of Americans said they always or often felt exhausted when they thought about politics.
“Exhaustion is underlying the entire attitude toward our presidential election,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “When you’ve got two people that are opposed by 70% of Americans who want a different choice, it creates frustration, anxiety and discouragement.”
Democratic strategists say no one is more motivating or terrifying to their voters than Trump.
Buoyed by strong showings in special elections last week and other recent contests, including a successful write-in campaign for Biden in New Hampshire’s primary, many believe their voters will grow increasingly engaged as the general election nears and Trump’s legal problems unfold.
He confronts 91 felony charges across four cases, is poised to be the first former president to face a criminal trial and now has staggering financial problems. He has also privately expressed support for a 16-week national abortion ban, with some exceptions, The New
York Times reported Friday. Democrats see abortion rights as a powerful motivator for their base and for some swing voters.
But there are warning signs on the left, as well.
A CNN poll recently asked how motivated Americans were to vote in the election. Republicans, out of power and eager to regain it, were more likely to say “extremely motivated.”
A Yahoo News/YouGov poll asked voters in the fall about their attitudes toward the 2024 election.
Thirty-nine percent of Democrats picked “exhaustion” from the list of sentiments offered (a close second to “dread”).
Just 26% of Republicans chose “exhaustion.”
Broadly, surveys have shown erosion in the party’s standing with traditional Democratic constituencies. On the left, some groups have warned of funding challenges and voter apathy, and the most visible source of in-the-streets energy is progressive frustration with Biden over his support for Israel.
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Biden, said there was evidence of enthusiasm in recent weeks, including on the fundraising front.
She also signaled that the campaign’s messaging would go beyond simply opposing Trump, drawing contrasts with Republicans on abortion rights and gun safety as she described the stakes of the election, and nodding to Biden’s policy accomplishments on such issues as combating climate change and child poverty.
“This election determines whether we build on that progress or we lose so many of our fundamental freedoms,” she said in a statement.
Many Democrats have argued that the party must do more to press an affirmative case for Biden’s reelection, beyond just stopping Trump again. They also worry that some voters could vote for a third party or sit out altogether this year.
“They hear it every cycle: This is the most important election ever,” said Leah Daughtry, a Democratic strategist. While she considers Trump an “existential threat,” she said, “people want to vote for something and not necessarily against something.”
Certainly, Trump is hardly a morning-in-America candidate. And while some have tuned him out since he left office, he will be unavoidable in an election year — reminding voters, Democrats hope, of everything they have long disliked about him.
The former president, whose supporters attacked the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election, has encouraged political violence, spread conspiracy theories and preached a darkly nativist vision.
He has sought to undermine American institutions and threatened to upend the international order — recently suggesting that he would encourage Russian aggression against American allies.
“People are going to be more alert because Trump has become even more outrageous in his post-presidency,” Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a Democrat, said in an interview last month. “It will be a challenge to make sure that people are aware of what he is doing . ... But I do believe that the stakes will be so high in this election that people will, at the end of the day, understand that our democracy truly is at stake.”
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, a Biden campaign co-chair, said after Trump won the New Hampshire primary: “There has been a palpable shift. And it’s what I had hoped for. I hope we can sustain it and grow it.”