House

Dems see Trump in new light: Recruitment tool, not campaign bludgeon

by Mike Lillis - 02/09/17 8:06 PM ET

BALTIMORE — House Democrats eying gains in 2018 are looking at President Trump in a new light.

The lawmakers increasingly see the tempestuous commander in chief not as their direct ticket to sweeping down-ballot victory, but as a potent tool for recruiting the type of Democratic candidates who can pick off Republican incumbents.

Trump’s dizzying pace in his first weeks in office has delighted his conservative base, but millions of critics have taken to the streets around the country to protest his initial executive orders on immigration, refugees and women’s healthcare, among other topics. The Democrats say the raucous political environment is proving a boon to their talent search.

“He’s going to be the gift that keeps on giving,” Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said during a press briefing during the party’s annual strategy retreat at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

“We’re hearing in the broader context, that recruiting is … sort of happening on its own,” echoed Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.).

“‘Thank you’ to Donald Trump,” he said.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said Thursday that there’s “no question” the Democrats will pick up seats in 2018, since mid-term elections in a president’s first four years typically favor the opposition party.

But Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), the chairman of the Democrats’ recruitment effort, emphasized that the gains will come by targeting the positions individual Republicans take on Trump’s agenda, not on Trump himself.

“President Trump is a better recruitment tool for us than he is necessarily the central campaign mission,” Heck said. “Of course it’s relevant. At the end of the day, however, 2018 will be more a referendum on … what it is the House Republicans do.”

Shell shocked by Trump’s victory, House Democrats launched an internal probe into the reasons why their pre-election predictions of big gains proved wrong.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who’s spearheading that effort, presented the initial findings to the Democrats on Thursday.

Himes, the head of the New Democrats, said the early verdict is that party leaders focused too intently on linking down-ballot Republicans to the GOP candidate at the top of the ticket.

“Particularly in rural America, there was clearly some polling that was just way, way off. … Partly because of that, we over-utilized the ‘tie-them-to-Trump’ tactic,” Himes said.

“We tried that in districts that were kind-of 50-50 Trump/Clinton, and it turns out that’s not terribly effective in a 50-50 district,” he added. “Those [ideas] emerged in a big way today.”

The Democrats, who’d expected big gains in November, picked up just six seats. Campaign leaders had linked the GOP candidate to Trump in many districts, though the tactic was hardly universal. In districts where Trump polled well, they tended to avoid him altogether.

Still, there’s a growing recognition among Democrats that they can’t hinge their strategy on Trump alone.

“This isn’t just about Donald Trump. … This is about [Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell; it’s about [Speaker] Paul Ryan,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “The focus is on the Republicans in Congress.”

Much of the energy at this week’s retreat has been spent mulling the question of how the Democrats’ message failed to resonate with more voters — particularly with white, working-class voters in Rust Belt states — and what they can do to improve on that record in 2018.

It’s a question that’s become the recurring theme in Baltimore: How can Democrats convince voters that their policies would benefit the working class?

“Our challenge is: While we fight that fight every day, we didn’t communicate that message in a way that was received,” Pelosi said. “Never again will we go into an election where people don’t know that Democrats are there for working families.”

Himes was even more blunt.

“Clearly we have to tell a much better story about what we were able to achieve for the American people in certain geographies where, though they may have benefited, boy, did we ever blow the message,” he said.

Tags Denny Heck Donald Trump Mitch McConnell Paul Ryan