Democrats, looking past mere victory, hope to end the Trump movement

By Amy Chozick, New York Times News Service

Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Democrats had hoped the party’s convention last week in Philadelphia would win over skeptical voters and ease concerns about Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness, giving her a slight advantage in an unpredictable election year.

But after Donald Trump criticized the parents of a slain Muslim-American soldier, that cautious optimism morphed into a widespread belief that the race had fundamentally shifted in Clinton’s favor.

“It’s a more permanent turning point,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Allies remain skittish and say that by many measures Clinton is a weak candidate with a muddled message who faces an electorate in which a majority of voters do not trust or like her.

But Trump’s inability to seize on his own party’s convention and emerge a more disciplined candidate has eased early concerns that he could appeal to a broader electorate in the fall.

“People are waking up to how unsound Donald Trump is,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut. He specifically pointed to Trump’s criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

“He couldn’t have done a better job of reminding people who were on the fence why they can’t vote for him,” Malloy said.

Democrats, prompted by Trump’s latest antics and the string of Republicans who have spoken out against him, have, perhaps prematurely, started discussing a loftier goal than just winning in November: a wide margin of victory, driven by a record turnout among black, Latino and young voters, that could help squash Trump’s movement.

David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, proposed the idea in June. “It is not enough to simply beat Trump,” he wrote on Twitter. “He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”

The proposition seemed far-fetched at the time, given the realities of the electoral map and Clinton’s weaknesses. But in recent days Democrats and advisers have, delicately, embraced the idea.

“The first order of business is winning,” said Geoff Garin, a strategist for Clinton’s 2008 campaign who now advises Priorities USA Action, a pro-Clinton super PAC. “But the larger stakes of the election are putting the country on a path where Trump’s views of the world are far in our rearview mirror.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California said that a Democratic win in November was far from guaranteed, but that she hoped for “a complete revulsion of the Trump wing” that would lead to a “realignment” of the Republican Party.

Obama, who is known to be competitive, has also prioritized making sure the voters who backed him in 2008 and 2012 turn out in equal numbers for Clinton. “He wants them to not just vote for him but to vote for the issues he cares about,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama.

Plouffe, elaborating on his earlier Twitter post, said in an email, “This could still be a relatively close race, but it’s more likely to be a blowout than a Trump win.”

Trying to seize on her postconvention edge, Clinton has campaigned in Republican areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and held a rally in deep-red Nebraska on Monday. She is asking voters to “put country over party” as she scorns Trump over his hiring of foreign workers at his country clubs. “Shame on you, Donald Trump,” Clinton said Sunday.

In the days since the convention, Clinton has improved her polling lead against Trump by 7 percentage points, with 52 percent of Americans saying they would vote for her, compared with 43 percent for Trump, according to a CNN/ORC poll released on Monday. Other polls have echoed those results.

For the first time, Clinton holds a lead against Trump among voters regarding the economy, with 50 percent saying they trust her compared with 48 percent for Trump, who led on the issue by 11 percentage points in July.

“Donald Trump did not do anything to expand his appeal beyond his core supporters,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign. Clinton, he added, has made “inroads with voters who might not have supported her previously.”

Even so, today’s extreme partisan divisions make blowouts like Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon’s 1972 victory over George McGovern unimaginable, presidential historians said.

Over the last 20 years, the number of Americans who hold extreme conservative or liberal views has doubled to 21 percent in 2014 from 10 percent in 1994, according to the Pew Research Center. And the middle has shrunk.

“It’s closer than anyone of us would want it to be,” said John L. Burton, the chairman of the California Democratic Party. “Those who say, ‘Let’s have the Nixon sweep against McGovern,’ are talking through their hat.”

Even with a newfound spring in their step, Clinton’s aides say she will not have anything resembling an easy or predictable ride to Election Day.

They pointed to a range of variables that could reverse Clinton’s fortunes, including potential revelations in another trove of hacked emails. Julian Assange, the founder of the group WikiLeaks, which released 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee’s server, has pledged to release additional emails to weaken Clinton.

Clinton has only recently emerged from an FBI investigation into her use of a private server at the State Department, and although there were no indictments, questions persist about her judgment and trustworthiness in handling her emails.

In the past two months, Trump and the Republican National Committee saw a flood of online donations to help him almost bridge the financial divide with Clinton, another sign that the race could be closer than expected.

Matthew Dowd, an Independent political consultant and former strategist for George W. Bush, pointed out that no candidate has come out of a convention with unfavorable ratings as high as Clinton’s and gone on to win the White House. But unlike most candidates, Clinton faces a fall contest against an opponent who is even more disliked.

“It’s like two villains from a Batman movie are running against each other and voters say, ‘I’m going to go with the one who isn’t the crazy Joker,'” Dowd said.

But in the past few days, even skittish Democrats have demonstrated confidence that Trump has made the conversation about himself and the swirl of controversy over his words in his own party, rather than attacking Clinton.

In interviews, several of Clinton’s allies pointed to a three-month sprint to Election Day in which they predicted that Trump would continue to distract from his message and that Clinton’s campaign could quietly work to build up her support and register voters in critical battlegrounds.

These Democrats pointed to Trump’s presumably laying the groundwork for a prolonged post-Labor Day fight over whether he will participate in the presidential debates. He expressed complaints this week that the bipartisan commission that arranges the events had scheduled two of the three to take place during professional football games.

“I don’t think there’s any question he’ll drive the next 11 weeks,” said William M. Daley, Obama’s former White House chief of staff. “She’s out there with a message, whether it’s moving anything, great. But he’s embroiled.”

Clinton’s reliance on Trump’s misfires, rather than the strength or resonance of her own message, is an inherently risky strategy, Dowd said. “What if for the next 90 days he stops shooting himself in the foot?” he asked.

But Democrats said the period of wondering whether Trump could become a more disciplined candidate had ended with his attacks on the Khans.

“It’s like saying if I became 8 feet tall, I’d be a great starter for the Cleveland Cavaliers,” said Guy Cecil, chief strategist at Priorities USA Action. “It’s never going to happen.”