A leading Democratic political action committee on Thursday announced plans to spend $100 million in four key 2020 battleground states, saying it wants to get beyond President Trump’s personality and convince voters he’s bad for their health, wallets and rights.
After Democrats tried in vain in 2016 to define Mr. Trump as “unfit” for the White House to voters, the party needs to go deeper than attacking the president on mere personal or stylistic grounds, said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, a super PAC.
“Our focus must be on health care, wages and the issues that people believe affect them,” Mr. Cecil told reporters. “It must explain to them that the gridlock and the chaos that is created by this administration is not a negative all on its own — although it is — but rather, the negative is that it’s preventing things from getting done.”
As part of the initial effort, he said the group will place staff on in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — four states Mr. Trump carried in 2016.
He said the ultimate goal is to reach between 2 million and 2.5 million voters in early primary states largely through digital engagement over the next year, while Democrats are still settling on who their nominee will be.
The group spent about $200 million in the 2016 presidential election, and Mr. Cecil said he expects the total for 2020 would be comparable to that. Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, but are legally barred from coordinating with individual candidates or their campaigns.
The group’s efforts later will expand into other battleground states like Nevada and New Hampshire, and Democratic “reach” states like Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.
Mr. Cecil said part of the group’s broader message to Democrats this cycle is essentially to “throw away” old turnout models from the 2018, 2016 and 2012 elections.
He said a prime focus is “to stop thinking about this in terms of turnout scores and likelihood to turn out, and rather to think of this as how we expand as largely as possible the universe of mobilization and Democratic targets that we’re talking to.”
He pointed out that many people who voted in the 2018 midterms, in which the Democrats regained control of the U.S. House, didn’t vote in 2016 and hadn’t been as engaged before Mr. Trump was elected.
Mr. Cecil said a notable part of the group’s work will be to argue that GOP policies have negatively affected so-called “Obama-Trump” voters, who are older and whiter, tend to live in more rural areas and might have supported Mr. Trump simply because they couldn’t stomach the thought of voting for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
He said there’s no reason to hope voters can be swayed by complaining about Mr. Trump’s style.
“Most Americans either believe or don’t believe Donald Trump has a bad temperament,” he said. “What else would we offer to the American people to prove the point? And by the way, even people that believe he has a bad temperament, there are going to be a host of people that aren’t that interested and don’t care. It’s not important to them.”
GOP pollster Jim McLaughlin said there is some truth to Mr. Cecil’s contention that Democrats could end up treading water if they make the election a referendum on Mr. Trump’s temperament.
“The country is now used to a Donald Trump presidency,” Mr. McLaughlin said.
He said Democrats have their own problems to worry about, including a field that could end up with dozens of viable contenders.
“I think Trump is definitely favored, but it’ll be competitive like it always is,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.