President Trump’s incendiary claims that his Democratic critics in Congress are un-American are driving a deep wedge between his 2020 campaign and critical elements of the coalition he needs to secure a second term.
Suburban women and college-educated whites sidelined doubts about Trump and provided support crucial to his victory over Hillary Clinton. But many, fed up with the president’s antics and rhetoric, defected to the Democratic Party in midterm elections two years later. Senior Republican strategists are warning that Trump’s divisive attacks on the four female minority congressional Democrats could permanently exile these key voting blocs, costing the president reelection.
“Republicans want this election to be about the economy and judges. If it’s about Trump’s tweets and temperament, it’s likely that Democrats will have an enthusiasm advantage,” said Alex Conant, a GOP operative who has advised presidential candidates.
Multiple Republicans interviewed for this story declined to speak on the record for fear of angering Trump or causing a problem for their clients.
Granted the protection of anonymity, however, some said the president had committed an egregious, self-inflicted error that could haunt him all the way into next year. A veteran Republican consultant said this latest episode was a bigger political problem for Trump than his controversial response to a violent gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, two summers ago.
“It’s the worst thing he has done,” this GOP insider said. “It’s a blunder and the telling fact that not a single person in the White House has the ability to course correct … and keep it from being a week-long story sets up a terrible narrative.”
[Also read: Here are the Republicans calling out Trump’s ‘go back’ comments]
Trump sparked a firestorm with a series of Twitter posts and subsequent statements in which he said a group of liberal firebrands often referred to as “the squad” — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
All four are citizens, and only Omar is a naturalized American. The suggestion that the women should go back where they came from is an old xenophobic slur periodically deployed, typically by white Protestant Americans, to denigrate and demonize immigrants, as well as white and nonwhite ethnic and religious minorities who are citizens or legal residents.
Trump rejected charges of racism, saying he simply rebuked these Democrats for their unbridled, “unfair,” criticism of the United States. But GOP political professionals said the dust-up amounted to another example of the president paying too much attention to his loyal, grassroots base at the expense of traditional college-educated Republicans in the upscale suburbs who never warmed to his brand of populist pugilism.
“They have a lot of work to do,” Dave Carney, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire, said.
Much attention has been lavished on Trump’s remarkable connection with white working-class voters that in 2016 helped him break the Democrats’ decades-old stranglehold on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But the president would have fallen short without sufficient backing from suburban Republicans, women among them, who voted for him, despite reservations, because they could not stomach Clinton.
Spats such as the one Trump is engaged in with “the squad,” part of his relentless focus on immigration, is not the way to win over this disaffected cohort. Exit polls from 2016 and 2018 tell the tale.
Three years ago, Clinton’s advantage over Trump with women was 13 points. In the historically high-turnout midterm elections, the Democratic Party’s margin over the GOP with women grew to 19%. In 2016, Trump garnered 42% of college-educated voters and won the suburbs by 4 percentage points. Last fall, the Republicans managed to win just 39% of college-educated voters and saw Democrats erase their edge with suburban voters.
Some Republicans countered with assurances that the Democratic nominee, a year from being crowned, would be similar to Clinton — unacceptable to voters who would otherwise oppose Trump. Others said the president was ingeniously forcing the Democratic Party to embrace Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib, who have all had their own brush with political controversy.
Even as Trump endangers his winning 2016, both of these outcomes are nevertheless possible.
Many Republicans once opposed to Trump, both during the 2016 campaign and after inauguration, have since enthusiastically backed him, citing the Democratic Party’s left turn and fear that Democrats such as those four outspoken, female House members would dictate policy.
“From a strategic standpoint, when your enemies are self-destructing, leave them alone. That’s the temptation the prez too often succumbs to,” said Charlie Gerow, a GOP operative in Pennsylvania. “But I think the prospects of Democrats coming up with a candidate weaker than Hillary Clinton, as hard to imagine as that might be, is very real.”
