Why democrats are unsure about how to confront Trump’s race-baiting

But Democrats who might otherwise be giddy about Trump’s inflammatory language — and the prospect that it would further alienate suburban white voters while provoking African Americans and Hispanics — instead appear uncertain of how to confront a president intent on recreating the unconventional playbook that won him the 2016 election.

Like with much of Trump’s political career and presidency, there is no precedent for guiding their responses to his provocations, especially since his remarks appear to be divorced from any broader political strategy.

“This kind of thing is maddening and demoralizing,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who is hosting the second set of Democratic debates Tuesday and Wednesday in Detroit, conveying a sense of exasperation.

Many Democrats believe that too much focus on Trump’s fitness for office contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, but at the same time recognize that the party’s assurgent progressive wing will not allow 2020 candidates to merely condemn attacks on prominent black and Hispanic figures like Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the Rev. Al Sharpton and a quartet of freshman congresswomen known as “the squad.”

Though nearly all of the 24 Democratic presidential contenders have rebuked Trump for his behavior, he is rarely a focus of their campaign stump speeches or events. Instead, they have found a Democratic electorate hungry for substantive policy proposals and ideas for how they will repair and shape the country in a post-Trump era.

And while the attacks would likely have proved devastating to previous presidents — and may ultimately harm Trump in the election — Democrats offered only minimal optimism that they would redound to their benefit 15 months from now. Some pointed out that Trump regularly disparaged people of color, including the Muslim parents of a dead soldier, during his successful 2016 campaign.

“Democrats can’t simply rely on people’s hate for Trump for being the aspirational thing that turns people out,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a progressive civil rights advocacy organization. Alluding to the respect and loyalty black voters showed to Barack Obama, he said, “When black people’s numbers surged in 2012, it wasn’t because they hated Mitt Romney.”

The president has also had the benefit of minimal pushback from Republicans, who have mostly refrained from rebuking him. Even Romney, now a Utah senator — who came to Washington saying he would stand against racism from the White House — has been silent since a July 18 tweet saying that “send her back” chants at a Trump rally in North Carolina were “offensive.”

Trump’s repeated attacks against prominent politicians of color are not driven by a grand strategy or backed by Republican research, people close to the president said, speaking anonymously to discuss private conversations. Instead, they are the product of impulse and personal grievance, which are further stoked by the president’s favorite television network, Fox News.

His denigration of Cummings and the city of Baltimore, for instance, were motivated largely by the decision by the House Oversight Committee, which the congressman chairs, to subpoena texts and emails sent or received by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, on their personal accounts.

One senior adviser, who was not authorized to speak for attribution about campaign deliberations, said that at this point some aides see Trump’s tweets as politically harmless. While they aren’t strategic, they have the potential upside of pushing Democrats further left, the aide said — suggesting, for instance, that Democrats might regret supporting Sharpton so forcefully down the road.

The aide also said that the tweets cost the president no votes among his own base, and that aides think Democrats overstate the cumulative weight of the tweets with swing voters. If anything, a second senior adviser said, most voters are tuning much of this out.

Planned or unplanned, Trump’s stream of invective has far-reaching implications for the 2020 presidential race, ensuring that a searing debate over race in America will play a central — and ugly — role in next year’s election.

“It’s polarizing, it’s divisive and I think it’s an old school strategy that may pay off in the short term,” said Donna Brazile, a former Democratic National Committee chairwoman. “Long term it’s damaging to our country, it’s tearing us apart.”

Outside the White House, Trump’s supporters are echoing his sentiments about Baltimore and Cummings. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., condemned the congressman in a Sunday interview with NBC News. And Darrell Scott, a Cleveland minister who was a co-founder of the 2016 Trump campaign’s diversity coalition, said Trump is correct about living conditions in Baltimore.

“We can’t say just because someone was a civil rights activist and marched 50 years ago that that immunizes them against any criticism,” Scott said of Cummings. “He shouldn’t walk it back. There’s nothing to walk back.’’

The president showed no signs of retreating Monday, unleashing new criticism against Sharpton, continuing his attacks on Cummings and gathering African American supporters at the White House. Late Monday, he laced into Cummings and Baltimore again, saying money funneled to the city had been “stolen or wasted.”

While the president presses his attacks with few repercussions, Democrats are left in the familiar positiion of debating the best way to respond: Attack him? Ignore him? Pivot to issues like health care?

Polling conducted before last year’s midterm elections by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA found that mentioning Trump depressed enthusiasm among African Americans, especially younger ones, who viewed his 2016 victory as proof of a political system stacked against them.

With that in mind, Democrats who carried the party to victory in the House and flipped seven governor’s mansions did so largely by ignoring Trump in their campaigns, treating the president as background music they could sing along to without addressing him directly.

But now Trump’s vilification of Democrats of color has ratcheted up the volume and carries the risk for the president that it will increase black voter turnout as well.

“When black communities are under attack, they do feel more motivated to get politically involved,” said Jenn Stowe, deputy executive director of Priorities USA. “His election was demotivating to young black voters, but when Trump is attacking their communities they are more likely to get involved politically.”

Then there are the suburban voters who powered Democrats in 2018 — millions of them were former Republicans repelled by Trump’s behavior. They are hardly the target audience for the resistance politics of “the squad.”