Even as the Democrats seek to unite behind former Vice President Joe Biden, the Trump campaign is going to work targeting Bernie Sanders’s populist supporters while discouraging progressives out of the GOP’s reach from voting for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“There is a significant percentage of Sanders supporters, about 20%, who back him not for his policies but for his anti-establishment and anti-status quo persona,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “That’s the Trump target in 2020.”
To win them, Trump and his supporters are emphasizing points of agreement on issues like trade while portraying Biden as a Washington insider who cheated Sanders out of the nomination, just like Hillary Clinton four years ago.
“President Trump is still disrupting Washington, D.C., while Biden represents the old, tired way and continuing to coddle the communist regime in China,” said Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale in a statement after Sanders suspended his campaign. “Democrat elites shoved Bernie Sanders to the side for a second time, leaving many of his supporters looking for a new home.”
Trump put it more bluntly himself. “Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday,” the president tweeted. “This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!”
But the campaign has to walk a fine line, trying to draw Sanders supporters while bashing him for infecting Biden with leftism. “This is further proof that even though Bernie Sanders won’t be on the ballot in November, his issues will be,” Parscale said after Sanders endorsed Biden in a video chat. “Biden had to adopt most of Bernie’s agenda to be successful in the Democrat primaries.”
Trump makes the pitch more directly. “The last time we had a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters,” he said in a television interview earlier this year. “I think if they take it away from him like they did the last time, I really believe you’re going to have a very riotous time in the Democrat Party.”
In 2016, over 10% of voters who cast their primary ballots for Sanders ended up supporting Trump in the general election. According to analysts, that amounted to 1.5 million votes, including an estimated 216,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, more than Trump’s margin of victory in these decisive states. Others simply declined to vote for Clinton.
“About 20% of the Sanders vote supported Trump over Clinton in 2016 or stayed home, and they are still somewhat getable today,” said Luntz. “But it will be harder this time because there are less of them. There just aren’t many crossover voters anymore. Demographically, they are most likely to be male, over age 50, white, non-college grads, and a significant percent belonged to a union at one time. They don’t agree with Trump on all the issues, but they do agree with him on welfare and immigration, and they think he’s a victim of a hostile media.”
Democrats believe they can avoid a repeat this time around because of Trump’s incumbency and how early Sanders backed Biden. Sanders was still running against Clinton at this time in 2016, just as she was still running against Barack Obama at this point in 2008. And some Republicans are also skeptical. “We haven’t seen the same effects in our 2020 battleground polling,” warned GOP pollster Chris Wilson. “Only a handful (1-3%) of Bernie voters vote Trump in a Trump/Biden ballot.”
“It looks like a big chunk of [Sanders’s] 2016 vote was an anti-Hillary protest vote, and that explains the 2016 Bernie/Trump vote,” Wilson added.
“Sanders’s early endorsement of Biden makes all the difference in the world,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “In 2016, the war between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton lasted until July and gave the Vermont senator’s supporters only four months to grieve, get over their hero’s defeat, and do a 180 to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. Now Sanders voters have a full seven months to lick their wounds and get back into the fight.
“The other reason for a lower Sanders supporter defection rate this year opposed to four years ago will be four years of Donald Trump,” he added. “For progressive activists, the reality of the Trump presidency in 2020 is a more compelling reason to vote for the Democratic standard-bearer than the threat of a Trump presidency was in 2016.”
Another Bannon has a different message. “Either don’t vote or vote for Trump,” former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said on Real Time With Bill Maher. “The Bernie people helped make Trump president, and they’re gonna help make Trump president again, because he’s been screwed by the Democratic Party.”
