If you thought the petty nicknames, mudslinging, and national stereotypes of the 2016 campaign marked an ugly descent into the gutter, then you ain’t seen nothing yet.
In the past few weeks, President Trump has joked about shooting migrants during a rally in Florida; characterized Baltimore, a majority black coastal city that voted for Hillary Clinton, as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess”; and urged minority Democratic members of Congress to return from where they came. With the election more than a year away, he has gone ugly early.
On the other side, Democrats are lining up to impeach the president while presidential candidates are abandoning the center ground in a race to offer the most extreme policies and the most strident condemnation of Trump.
The result is a contest turned up to 11, according to Rich Galen, a veteran Republican strategist, who said the candidates were in danger of leaving themselves no space to escalate further during the rest of the campaign.
“If I were advising Trump’s advisers, which I would never do, I’d say guys you have to get him to save some of this for the last 45 days not the last 15 months,” he said, adding that the same was true of candidates such as Bernie Sanders, who has been pushing the same hardline message for years.
“You’ve got to keep building on what you said last time otherwise voters will say, well, you already said that, and sooner or later stretching the envelope tears the envelope.”
Trump campaign officials insist they are running a positive reelection bid. They say the president’s successful stewardship of the economy will be the issue that powers them to victory in 2020. President Trump and Vice President Pence have hammered that message in recent weeks, highlighting jobs and trade in visits to Wisconsin (at an aerospace contractor) and in Ohio (at a groundbreaking ceremony for an automotive factory) among other campaign stops.
Yet in recent days Trump has pushed a bleaker approach, telling his advisers that he believes his attacks on four minority, liberal Democrats — or “the Squad” of Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley — will motivate core supporters.
He has shrugged off questions about whether he would moderate his message and reach out to swing voters.
“I think my base is so strong,” he told Time magazine in a recent interview, “I’m not sure that I have to do that.”
It suggests a negative strategy based on mobilizing anger and turnout based in part around turning the four women into the face of the Democrats, painting the entire party as radical socialists and un-American.
There is evidence the approach is working. A recent YouGov poll found that all four had poor favorability ratings. Ocasio-Cortez had the lowest favorability, at a mere 23%. Trump’s negative messaging has kept them in the news, far above what their fringe status might otherwise deserve.
Yet it comes with a risk, according to critics, who don’t see it as a path to reelection.
“I just don’t believe that his base is big enough,” said Galen. “Even if they all turned out to vote, I don’t think there are enough votes there.”
And, perhaps more importantly, there is doubt the country has the stomach for four more years of anger-stoking tweets from both sides.
David Axelrod, the former adviser to Barack Obama, said the ugly campaign would be Trump’s undoing.
“Every, single day, he subjects the country he was elected to lead to a stream of ugly, divisive bombast,” he tweeted. “It’s exhausting. It’s destructive. It’s unworthy of a POTUS. And it would only get worse. Four more years? Of THIS?”
