For months, the Trump campaign and its allies have bided their time, content to let the crowded Democratic field slug it out in an exhausting, expensive race to the left in search of the presidential nomination. It meant donors could build the election war chests and strategists could compile the opposition research they believe will keep the White House in Republican hands come November.
For now, the message is a simple one-size-fits-all approach: Whoever wins the exhausting slugfest will be so battered and encumbered by expensive, progressive policies that the candidate will make for easy prey.
That could change on Super Tuesday. If a winning Democratic candidate emerges, then the Trump campaign is poised to pivot to a new phase.
“They will use socialism against all the candidates, after a campaign in which they all moved to the left,” said a senior campaign adviser. “However, a campaign against Bernie Sanders will be very different from a campaign against Biden or Bloomberg.”
Which campaign will be needed should become more evident after Tuesday, when 15 states and territories, including the two biggest, will allocate a third of all delegates.
Sanders, who has won two out of three contests so far and has the biggest delegate count, will be looking to finish off his opponents. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, the former vice president, needs a win in South Carolina on Saturday and a firm showing on Tuesday if his campaign is not to fizzle out. And Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, will find out if his audacious effort to hijack the nomination can succeed when his name is on the ballot for the first time.
The congestion has Trump 2020 officials licking their lips at the prospect of facing a candidate weakened by months of infighting and chained to an activist manifesto of higher spending.
Tim Murtaugh, communications director, said: “It doesn’t matter which candidate is thrown free of the wreckage.”
“Bernie is the front-runner, but even if he’s not the opponent, his issues will be on the ballot,” he said. “For a whole year, Bernie Sanders has been the intellectual leader of the Democrats, and all the candidates are running on his issues.”
However, insiders say they will be watching the next tranche of results to identify the trends that will inform their campaign.
A dominant Sanders will mean a pivot to policy, scrutinizing his Medicare for All plan, the effect it will have on spending, and implications for families covered by employer insurance plans.
Biden will be defined by “grifting and corruption in D.C.,” said the campaign adviser. At the same time, Bloomberg’s billions will see him painted as an “establishment oligarch” trying to rebuild a system dismantled by President Trump.
“Who is he working for? The American people or his billionaire banker buddies?”
Along with the campaign, Trump-allied political action committees have reams of opposition research ready to unleash as soon as a nominee emerges.
“After Super Tuesday, that could become much clearer to us. If Bernie Sanders goes ahead, and he has the delegates, then we will start hammering him,” said a source familiar with America First Action PAC.
The strategy is based on months of focus groups and polling designed to identify critical issues that matter to voters. But the group plans to keep its powder dry and its planned $300 million war chest intact until a single target breaks free of the crowd.
“We have four- to five-hundred-page oppo books on each one. Pete’s is a little less because he’s 37 years old and doesn’t have much of a history, which also gives us a great opportunity to define him,” said the source.
The PAC will tailor its plan by individual and location among the six states it’s targeting — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. The history and policies of the nominee would affect whether the group advertised in the affluent Philadelphia suburbs, for example.
“If it was Sanders, then yes, because we have a shot at suburban women that find his policies abhorrent, but if it’s a Biden, perhaps we might go to the more rural areas and advertise there,” said the source.
Plans are drawn up for Sanders, Biden, Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg. But exactly when they are deployed remains to be seen.
Muddled results on Tuesday increase the likelihood that the attack plans are delayed, maybe even until after a brokered convention in mid-July. But the prospect has Republican strategists salivating.
“They are going to be bruised and battered, they’re going to come out of the convention and bam, we are going to rock them over the head,” said one. “We’ll deliver the final blow.”
