Flag-waving and Democrat-bashing: Trump's blueprint to win in 2020

A campaign-style speech by Donald Trump in the border city of El Paso, Texas on Monday night did more than just electrify the 6,500 crowd who turned out in red hats to enjoy a night of flag-waving, immigrant-bashing and Democrat-dissing.

“Is there any place that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?” the president asked from the stage, to a cascade of cheers.

The speech was also a road-test for the message Trump will use to try to win reelection – and there’s a chance it could work, strategists from across the political spectrum said.

While some top Democratic strategists mocked the speech for sounding a lot like the speeches Trump delivered before Republicans suffered historic losses in the 2018 midterms, others warned that the basic message – of a Trump-driven economic prosperity threatened by a radical Democratic agenda – could be effective in 2020.

At the center of the El Paso speech was a simple but potentially powerful framing of the opposition party.

“The Democrats have never been more outside of the mainstream,” Trump said. “They’re becoming the party of socialism, late-term abortion, open borders and crime.”

Not through even the most partisan lens could any of what Trump said be mistaken for truth. But the framing showed how his campaign plans to paint the Democratic party with a palette of conspiracy and fearmongering, shaded with just enough fact to appeal to voters beyond the core who agree with the president automatically.

Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist and stalwart member of the “Never Trump” camp, said he observed that Trump was ramping up talk about a strong economy in an effort to appeal to a broader circle of voters.

“He’s going to keep saying to the base, ‘Immigration, the caravan, the deadly Mexicans, here come the terrorists,’ because those folks are primed and conditioned for that message,” said Wilson. “But he has to get outside – you can’t win the presidency with 30% of the American people.”

Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, said Trump was also trying to shore up the evangelical Christian vote by talking about abortion, and he was bashing Democrats out of necessity, because his relatively low approval rating means he cannot simply run on his record.

“The main challenge for Democrats is not to take the bait,” Lake said. “It’s easy to want to defend against this kind of stuff. But the most important thing is for Democrats to define themselves, and the most important issue for them to define themselves on is the economy.

“And it would be a huge mistake to take this bait all the time, and that’s what I think Democrats have to guard against.”

‘Selling the idea, not the reality’

If Trump does not know who his 2020 opponent will be, he appears certain about how he will fight them.

“They’re coming for your money and they’re coming for your freedom,” Trump said in El Paso, adding: “Radical resistance. It’s the radical left.”

Judging by polling, it is Republicans, not the Democrats, who are outside the mainstream. The top Democratic policy priorities – growing the jobs market, expanding access to healthcare, addressing wealth inequality and combating discrimination – all enjoy higher public support than Trump’s trademark policy of building a wall on the Mexico border, not to mention other Republican priorities such as cutting taxes on the rich and blocking healthcare reform.

But Trump is not running a policy symposium, political analysts said.

“With Trump it’s all about selling the idea, not the reality,” said Republican strategist Evan Siegfried. “And that’s been his thing throughout his entire career. He’s just shifting that model to politics.”

Trump will try to define Democrats in a negative way by going after the party’s most visible young stars, said Siegfried, who thought the method could be effective with voters in the middle.

“You see a lot of these new freshmen among in Democrats – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar – they all have very high profiles and they’re pushing some pretty out-there stuff that is pushing the Democrat party further to the left, to a place where I don’t think the general electorate – at least swing voters – is comfortable.”

The Democratic party sees its unprecedented crop of diverse young talent as an unalloyed sign of promise as the country looks more and more like the trio Siegfried named and less and less like Trump.

But there’s no doubt about whether Trump senses a political opportunity in attacking the young Democrats. In El Paso, he mocked a nearby counter-rally led by former representative Beto O’Rourke, which law enforcement officials said drew 7,500.

“He has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump told his crowd. “Not too good.”

Trump also went after Ocasio-Cortez, although not by name, ridiculing a policy plan known as the Green New Deal the freshman congresswoman helped to unveil last week.

“I really don’t like their policy of, taking away your car, of taking away your airplane flights, of ‘Let’s hop a train to California’, of ‘You’re not allowed to own cows anymore’,” Trump said. “Lotta problems. Lotta problems.”

Trump was riffing on a factsheet about the policy circulated by Ocasio-Cortez’s office, later disavowed, which made a reference to getting rid “of farting cows and airplanes”. The actual plan for emissions reductions does not mention cars, airplanes or cows, farting or otherwise.

‘Sometimes you hand your opponent the sword’

“This is a race that Trump can’t win but the Democrats can absolutely lose,” Wilson said. “Sometimes you hand your opponent the sword to cut off your head.

“And in regard to the Democrats seeking political death, nothing would make that more likely than if they lead their 2020 campaign with gun control, climate change and abortion. You want to get Trump re-elected? That’s how you do it. You lead with those three things.”

Lake, the Democratic strategist, said that as Trump yells about socialism, Democrats should talk about healthcare and jobs.

“I wouldn’t worry about the label” Trump uses, such as “socialist” or any other, Lake said. “I’d worry about Democrats defining what they stand for. And the biggest challenge is not getting distracted by the president and not chasing every rabbit he throws out there.

“We have to get better on the economy. We have to communicate an economic message. That’s the most important thing we have to do. That should be what Democrats focus on.”