Will Trump remain a viable foil for Dems?

Playbook might have to change after election

By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA Today Network

..... For nearly a decade, Donald Trump was a political gift that kept on giving to the New Jersey Democrats.
..... Trump has served as a crude, toxic foil for Democrats to rail at with righteous indignation. Every xenophobic or racist utterance and every hard right turn in national policy gave the Jersey Democrats an opportunity to attack Republicans as the see-no-evil enablers of the former president. Most GOP makers in New Jersey, meanwhile, have tried to hide under rocks or changed the subject whenever Trump's is mentioned.
..... But in the aftermath of the November 5 [2024] election, when Trump pulled within five points of capturing New Jersey and turning a solid blue bastion into a potential swing state, the calculus has changed. It is the Democrats who now have a Trump cloud hanging over their future.
..... The Trump effect will be most keenly felt in the current crowded Democratic Party primary for next year's [2025] governor's race. Over the past several days, Representative Mikie Sherrill and Representative Josh Gottheimer rolled out their campaigns, joining Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, who announced earlier this year. [2024]
..... Former Senate President Steve Sweeney from Gloucester County and Seam Spiller, the present of the New Jersey Education Association, are expected to enter the race - an independent expenditure group associated with Spiller, who is also Montclair's mayor, has been flooding Democrats; mailboxes for two months with glossy mailers touting "Sean Spiller 2025."
..... For certain, Trump, the bombastic and authoritarian figure, will remain an easy target for the Democrats, especially if he carries out his promise to deport millions of migrants in the country illegally or continues nominating divisive figures like Matt Gaetz to potions of Cabinet-level power.
..... but, as he did nationally, Trump also made in roads into New Jersey voting blocs that had been reliable Democratic constituencies - working-class Latino and African Americans, particularly - with his superficial but blunt, easy-to-grasp economic populism. His promises to lower inflation and restore the economy to a pre-pandemic normalcy struck a chore with working-class voters who feel that they are going nowhere fast on a treadmill of survival.
..... The future of democracy, reproductive rights - issues central to Vice President Kamala Harris' turn-the-page candidacy -fell on deaf ears.
..... As a result, Trump now has complicated the challenges for the Democrats as their party seeks to hold on to the governor's office after eight years of Governor Phil Murphy's leadership. will railing against Trump be enough, when so many once-relibalbe Democrats voted for Trump, despite the blatant xenophobia and appeals to white nationalism and his flouting of democratic norms?
..... Should they simply cast themselves as candidates who promise to lead a more responsive style of governing that targets their bread-and-butter priorities, like health care, improved transit, job growth, tax relief? Or will they toggle between bashing Trump and follow his popular playbook at the same time?
..... "When the fist debate is over, which of these candidates can best stand up and respond to Donald Trump on behalf of New Jersey's Democrats? We have to assume that Donald Trump is not going to be as popular come March, April of next year [2025] as he is today," said Ben Dworkin, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowen University. "The second debate will be about the which of these candidates can speak to the working class that, at least at this point, seems to be ready to abandon, in large numbers, the Democratic Party."

What are Democratic candidates saying?

..... Already, candidates are reckoning with the fallout from Election Day. [11/05/2024]
..... James Gee, the campaign manager for Barak, the Newark mayor, argues that the lesson learned from November 5 [2024] only reinforced their message and strategy. Gee believes that there are large numbers of untapped Democrats in urban areas and suburbs with large minority populations that were largely neglected or taken for granted by the Democratic Party, He cites the tepid turnout in 2022 in the Democratic stronghold of Irvington, where only 7,000 votes were cast, out of a pool of 333,000 registered voters.
..... "The Democratic Party has spent a lot of time and money on network TV and not enough time in the communities that have demonstrated over 90% support for the Democratic Party,: Gee said. He noted that as mayor of the state's largest city, Baraka has extensive on-the-ground experience dealing with many complicated issued - housing, public safety and education - that have crossover safety beyond urban areas.
..... "He has seen more problems and tired to solve more problems by the time, you know lunchtime comes than any congressman has endure in four years of service, Gee said, taking a swipe at rivals Gottheimer and Sherrill.
..... But Gottheimer and Sherrill are also stressing their credentials in begin sensitive to the struggles of the neglected middle- and working-class voters and citing their strong reelection victories that exceeded the Harris results in New Jersey.
..... In an interview last week, [11/14/2024] Sherrill argued that voter concerns about child care, affordability, grocery prices and housing were central to her approach of governing long before Trump's national victory and strong showing in New Jersey. She outperformed Harris by more than 2,100 votes on November 5 [2025] in the Morris county-centric Eleventh congressional district where she was first elected in 2018. "We know these are the issues that are on people's minds," Sherrill said. "And so we need to hear from people and then make sure that they understand how much we are focused on their issues."
..... Sweeney, who is trying to stage a comeback after losing his Senate seat in 2021, also struck a center-right tone last week [11/13/2024] on the issue of taxes. After Trump's victory - and his call to cut taxes - Sweeney believes calling for lower taxes, once a Republican talking point, is now the syne with Democratic voters.
..... "We simply cannot tax our way forward. government needs to live within its means just like most people do in the real world,: Sweeney said in a statement. "And I'm calling on my opponents to join me in doing what;s right for people who pay more and fell like they're getting less in return."
..... Fulop, meanwhile, has been aligning himself with the grassroots progressives who rallied behind Senator-elect Andy Kim;s candidacy and crusaded for dismantling the "county line" ballot design, which was a big blow to the party bosses. Fulop has been cobbling together slates of legislative candidates who are likely to challenge candidates blessed by the party bosses but who no longer have the advantage of the preferential "party line" ballot. Instead candidates for a given office will be grouped together in a block ballot design, a move that gives challengers a stronger chance of winning.
..... "The Democratic Party in NJ has been running the same playbook for years driven by county chairmen who are also lobbyists and more interested in putting people in office who they know that they can control,' Fulop posted on X, in a typical bash-the-party-machine rhetoric. "Next year's [2025] campaign will change how the Democrat Party in NJ does business permanently."

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