When Hillary Clinton campaigned in California recently, she had a very simple message for the state’s Latino voters: Donald Trump is coming for you and I will protect you.
“Donald Trump has doubled down on his intention to deport 11 to 12 million Americans and he is even talking about what he’s called a deportation force,” Clinton told a large crowd in East Oakland. “Can you imagine the police and military action inside our borders, knocking on doors, hauling people out of their beds and workplaces? That is the picture he is painting and he needs to be repudiated.
“Basta, basta!” she yelled, Spanish for “no more.”
“I can’t imagine a starker choice on the economy,” Clinton said. “Donald Trump actually says wages are too high in America. I have no idea who he is talking to, do you?”
Clinton bet early that her best path in the general election was recreating the coalition that twice elected President Obama to the White House: women, minorities, young people and voters with college degrees. It’s a shift from 2008, when longtime Clinton booster Paul Begala mocked the Obama coalition as being limited to “eggheads and African-Americans.”
That was eight years ago, when Clinton was beating Obama in West Virginia with nearly 67 percent of the vote to his just under 26 percent. On Tuesday she lost the state to Bernie Sanders by 15 points, failing to crack 40 percent.
Clinton has clearly had to readjust on the fly. Much of her popular vote margin in the Democratic primaries comes from the black voters who so overwhelmingly rejected her against Obama. But as she pivots to the general election, she clearly hopes to recreate her former rival’s coalition by replacing enthusiasm for hope and change with fear and loathing of Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee.
It’s a dicey strategy in some ways. These are demographic groups that are growing, but not everyone has been able to replicate the high turnout among millennials and minorities that fueled Obama’s wins — including some Democratic candidates running in the midterm elections while he has been president.
“Relying on your opponent for turnout can be a risky bet,” former Mitt Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden told the Washington Examiner. “Successful presidential campaigns turn the work of voters and volunteers into a mission. They make it about the voter, convincing them that all of their time, all of their efforts and their resources are being harnessed for something bigger than themselves. They become personally invested in seeing their candidate win. That is a much more motivating force than organizing people to just vote against the other candidate.”
But Trump may be uniquely well-suited to exacerbating the Republican Party’s demographic problems. While he has clearly struck a nerve among a vast swathe of GOP voters who are angry at the government and their own party’s leaders, some polls show him with a 77 percent unfavorable rating among Hispanics, 86 percent of black voters and an amazing 70 percent of women.
Clinton may need the help. Young voters have frequently chosen Sanders over her in the Democratic primaries. She has done better with Latinos voters, but some (not all) polls show tepid favorable ratings with them. She is likely to win the black vote handily, as every Democratic presidential candidate has done since 1964, but it is possible turnout will be down without Obama topping the ticket.
“It’s amazing when you think about it that more black voters aren’t going for Bernie’s economic platform,” a Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner. He attributed it to Hillary’s strong support from black elected officials and Sanders’ lack of familiarity in the community, the former being a factor in Clinton’s favor in November.
Trump is so far delivering the help Hillary needs. He is losing in the current general election matchups precisely because his doing so poorly among the voting blocs Clinton is courting, in no small part by demonizing him. Take a look at her Twitter account: at least half the chatter, including her pinned tweet, are shots at Trump.
“We asked a dozen people how they feel about a Donald Trump presidency,” she said in a tweet showcasing anti-Trump signs. “They were… honest.” Another tweet invites anti-Trump Republicans to tell her campaign why they don’t think the brash billionaire should become president.
In fact, the Clinton campaign has already had to go so far as remind supporters that Trump could actually win so they remain engaged in the race. Deputy communications director Christina Reynolds pointed to “a bunch of new polls out this week that have us in a dead heat with Donald Trump in the critical general election states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.”
If Trump knows how to turn around his negatives among young people and minorities, you wouldn’t know it from his own tweets, such as one in which he professed his love of Hispanics over a Trump Café taco bowl. But he does have one counterpunch ready: using her Democratic primary challenger against her.
“As Bernie Sanders says, she has bad judgment,” Trump tweeted. In West Virginia, Trump said he didn’t agree with Sanders on much, except for the fact that Bill Clinton-supported trade deals like NAFTA were bad for American workers. In Oregon and elsewhere, Trump seldom passes up an opportunity to point out that Sanders keeps winning states and that Clinton’s “rigged” lead is padded by unelected superdelegates.
In 1992, voters who were concerned about trade, jobs and working-class wages voted for Pat Buchanan in the Republican primaries and Jerry Brown in the Democratic primaries, with Ross Perot scooping up some of both in the general. Trump may hope to be Buchanan, Brown and Perot all rolled into one.
While Trump has showed little ability to connect with voters outside the Republican base so far, a campaign pitched to globalization’s losers has the potential to reach a much more diverse electorate than he has reached in the primaries. Not only does citing Sanders have at least some potential to halt Clinton’s millennial momentum, but heightening concerns that she is too friendly with Wall Street and people shipping jobs overseas (even if a billionaire would seem an odd messenger for that) could cut into her support elsewhere.
Even if Trump can’t win over these voters, he can potentially demoralize them to the point where they stay home.
As Clinton was rallying Democrats in California against Trump, she faced protesters who included Sanders supporters. Clinton pleaded with them not to shout. But that doesn’t mean they would necessarily listen to Trump either.
