Democrats unveil secret election weapon- Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is using the presumptive Republican
nominee’s own words against him while seeking to brand the GOP as the
‘Party of Trump’
Democrats spent the past 10 months seeking to define Republicans as
the “Party of Trump”. This week, what was once dismissed as a fever
dream became a reality.
Following a crushing victory in the Indiana primary and the
suspension by Ted Cruz and John Kasich of their presidential campaigns,
Donald Trump was left as the last Republican standing in what seems an
inevitable contest against Hillary Clinton in November.
And even as Republicans began to openly anguish over whether they
could rally behind Trump’s candidacy, Democrats made clear the message
they will carry to the American electorate over the next six months:
Donald Trump is the Republican Party.
Nomination
The former reality TV star, who has all but secured the nomination,
stands to be the least popular presidential nominee in modern history.
And the Democratic political organization that will now work to defeat
him – from the race for the White House to the battle over control of
the US Congress – believes its secret weapon against Trump is the
billionaire himself.
The question is simply where to begin.
In its own opening salvo, the Clinton campaign allowed Republicans to
do the talking themselves in a brutal web video released on the day
after Trump was declared the presumptive nominee. It featured, among
others, Florida senator Marco Rubio referring to Trump as “a con artist”
and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency”, former
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney dubbing him as “a
misogynist” and Texas senator Ted Cruz stating the bombastic billionaire
was “utterly immoral”.
The archives are seemingly endless, as are the series of
controversial statements made by Trump over the course of the primary
season.
The real estate mogul infamously launched his bid for the White House
nearly a year ago with the declaration that most Mexicans crossing over
the US border were “rapists” and “killers”. He later mocked a disabled
reporter, proposed to ban all Muslims from entering the US, refused to
immediately disavow the endorsement of a former leader of the Ku Klux
Klan, and suggested women should be punished for having abortions.
Gender
“This is a candidate who has tried to divide the country by race, by
gender, by ethnicity, by body type, by age,” said Justin Barasky, the
communications director of the pro-Clinton Super Pac Priorities USA.
“There are very few groups of people that he hasn’t offended.”
The Super Pac also plans to pour at least $35m into digital ads aimed
at reaching the coalition of voters that have helped propel Democrats to
victory in recent election cycles: African Americans, Hispanics,
millennials and women. It also teamed up with Emily’s List, a Democratic
group that works to elect pro-choice women to public office, to raise
and spend $20m to reach millennial women voters, a key voting block that
could also be instrumental to electing America’s first female president.
“The most powerful way to run against a candidate is to use their
words against them, and with Trump, we have decades of offensive,
misogynistic comments at our disposal,” said Emily’s List spokeswoman
Marcy Stech.
“Women voters across the board already dislike him, but it will be up
to millennial women who hold the power to keep Trump from the White
House. It’s not enough to dislike him – we have to get out and vote our
power.”
Women, broadly speaking, hold some of the most unfavorable views of
Trump.
And so it was no surprise that the Clinton campaign and its allies
seized the moment last week when Trump asserted that the Democratic
frontrunner was playing “the woman card” and only stood where she was on
the basis of her gender.
Clinton responded by stating that if defending reproductive rights
and calling for equal pay amounted to playing the gender card, “then
deal me in”. Her campaign also raised $2.4m in three days off a “Woman
Card” drive launched in the wake of Trump’s comments, 40% of which came
from first-time donors.
The substantive contrast, from jobs and the economy to national
security, would give Clinton the opportunity not simply to rally core
Democratic constituencies but also to reach out to those Republicans
reticent to embrace him as their standard-bearer.
“The same message is true for Republicans as it is for Democrats. He
is too big a risk,” the aide said. “He will not keep us safe, in fact
some of his dangerous comments make us less safe.”
And while the presidential race is still expected to be waged across
the familiar battlegrounds, some early projections show the potential to
flip certain states on the electoral map into the Democrats’ column.
Among them are Arizona and Georgia, both of which are home to burgeoning
minority populations.
The impact of Trump’s nomination is also expected to reverberate
across Senate and House races. The Republican-led US Senate is defending
several seats in competitive states, where Democrats have been eager to
tie vulnerable incumbents to Trump.
“We’re going to hold Donald Trump accountable every single day
between now and 8 November, but also Republicans down the ticket who can
no longer make up excuses and have to say whether or not they stand with
their party’s standard-bearer,” said a top Democratic aide. Senator John
McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, was caught on tape
this week acknowledging in a private fundraiser the havoc Trump might
wreak for his re-election bid in Arizona.
“If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, here in Arizona, with
over 30% of the vote being the Hispanic vote, no doubt that this may be
the race of my life,” McCain said, according to audio obtained by
Politico.
Defended
Of the 34 seats up for grabs in November, 24 are being defended by
Republicans. Several are states won easily by Barack Obama in 2012, as
well as those where Trump fares poorly in the polls.
And in many of them, Democrats have female candidates on the ballot
who could be the beneficiaries of Trump’s record low approval ratings
among women.
Emily’s List has used Trump’s “woman card” comments to target
Republicans in states that include Ohio, Colorado, Illinois and Maine,
who are running in Senate races against women candidates.
That’s not to say Democrats are underestimating Trump and his
potential, whether at the presidential or statewide level. Barasky, of
Priorities USA, said at least one lesson gleaned from the primary season
was that Republicans failed to grasp just how much of a threat Trump
posed.
“We are taking Trump very, very seriously,” he said. “We believe that
Trump can win and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that
doesn’t happen.”
- The Guardian
|