WASHINGTON — 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-size-fits-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.
Flummoxed by Trump
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 preexisting 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 and fair game on the campaign trail.
And unlike the Virginia governor’s race, next year’s midterm will include federal races for the House and Senate, where the former president’s national impact might seem more relevant.
“Too often, especially with regards to Trump, we re-fight the last battle,” said Ian Russell, a Democratic strategist. “Trump, as a likely presidential candidate, very well could be a factor in the midterms, especially to mobilize our base.”
Democrats, Russell added, “have to follow the data and have an open mind, rather than making sweeping conclusions 11 months before Election Day.”
Nuanced message
Still, Democrats say that concerns over Trump’s lack of resonance for some parts of the party’s electoral base are going to make it more of a challenge to use him next year.
“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.”
Democrats can channel the message through targeted digital ads or mail, Haworth said, or tweak the type of message they tell about Trump depending on the audience. Talking too much about him, she added, also risks motivating Trump supporters who might otherwise sit out the midterm election.
Haworth said a message centered on Trump would likely need to connect with voters’ concerns about the economy or broader policy decisions coming from Washington.
“To be clear, an effective message that uses Trump is not something that is necessarily popular on Twitter,” Haworth said. “We know most of the ads that went viral during the 2020 election did little other than motivating online Democrats to give away their money.”
Ahamed, who said Priorities USA plans to continue an extensive research project into new Biden voters next year, added that he wasn’t exactly sure why there was a split between white Biden voters and voters of color. Some Black and Hispanic voters, he suggested, might be inured to parts of Trump’s presidency that white voters might find more shocking.
But he said, in his view, the value of a message that includes Trump is too valuable for parts of the Democratic base to give up on.
“You need to be careful and have nuances about what the messaging is,” Ahamed said. “But a large number of these voters showed up so they could tune out. They came out to vote because they wanted to stop paying attention to politics, but Trump has not gone away. And we need to actively talk about that because they aren’t reading about that in the news themselves. They are avoiding the news.”
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