The Democratic Party has quickly found itself in a major tactical disagreement over how to handle former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict.
On one side, the party’s establishment figures are preaching caution and sobriety and have no evident plans to immediately capitalize on the historic jury decision to benefit President Joe Biden. On the other, a number of prominent officials and operatives see the unanimous verdict as a political gift and are incredulous that the party would not use it as a cudgel.
“I don’t think Democrats need to be shy about weighing in,” former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones told POLITICO. “I don’t think there’s anything to lose and a lot to gain, because I am convinced there’s a swath of people out there who are going to be very, very troubled by this at this point and haven’t really completely followed it, wondered about it — but now all of a sudden, this is a game changer.”
The tension between these two factions burst into public view immediately after news that Trump had been found guilty on 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records in an attempt to cover up hush money payments to a porn star. While the debate mirrors the longstanding intraparty dispute Democrats have waged over how to attack the more scandalous elements of Trump’s life, the timing of this argument is particularly consequential. Democrats have five months left to hone their general election case to the voters — and Trump’s guilty verdict may be one of the last remaining inflection points for the party to make a major strategic shift.
For now, the White House appears committed to a more cautious course. When the president on Friday delivered his first public comments about the verdict, he used them to attack Trump not as a convicted felon but for being “reckless” in sowing doubt about the rule of law.
The reelection campaign, in its own statement on Thursday, went to some lengths to downplay the political significance of the verdict, noting that the former president would still be on the ballot this November. Perhaps most telling was the Democratic National Committee’s response. The entity directly tasked with waging partisan warfare on behalf of the party didn’t issue a statement at all. Instead, an official at the DNC pointed to the campaign’s remarks.
Biden aides note that they can readjust their hands-off strategy if the ruling serves to be more damaging to Trump in the weeks and months ahead. But they believe the race will ultimately fall on other issues more pertinent to voters, with data showing voters had not been significantly moved by the trial. One Biden campaign official added the guilty conviction is a single proof point that builds on the campaign’s broader message that Trump is out only for himself.
Democratic campaign groups appear to agree. Pat Dennis, president of one of the party’s major outside entities, American Bridge 21st Century, said his organization will, like Biden, counter Trump’s attacks on the legal system by publicly calling them out. But he also suggested that the verdict would not drive its messaging against Trump and that his group will use it instead to create a contrast by talking about matters more on the minds of voters, such as abortion and democracy.
Some major voices within the party say there is merit in that approach.
“I think the most important thing he can do is connect his work to people’s lives and create a contrast between a president who is fighting to address their problems, and a disgraced and bitter former president who is obsessed with his own,” said David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic operative who helped lead Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) warned that the party could “overplay our hand” if Trump was perceived as Democrats’ main focus. “It should be part of a handful of issues that I think should help us win the election,” he said. “There’s no question we have to continue talking about bringing costs down, putting people over politics. But extremism and corruption of the Trump Republican Party is an important part of our message, too.”
The backdrop to the Democratic Party’s division over how to handle Trump’s verdict is the nearly uninterrupted chorus of Republicans attacking the prosecution. The former president’s campaign has argued that he is a political prisoner and a victim of a witch hunt. Top GOP leaders were quick to follow suit. Trump himself held a press conference on Friday morning, saying he did not get a fair trial and likening his conviction to living in a “fascist state.”
The GOP’s campaign committees have been aggressively using the verdict to gin up fundraising. And the Trump campaign said Friday morning that it had raised $34.8 million dollars from small-dollar donors since the verdict came down, nearly doubling its previous 24-hour fundraising record.
For a faction of Democrats, that contrast is troubling. One top ally of the White House, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there was a nascent fear within the party that Trump would “only benefit” from the verdict.
Other operatives expressed concern that, in a vacuum, Trump would avoid any political repercussions for being the first ex-president found guilty in a criminal trial. They argue that even for people who think Biden himself should stay above the fray, there is a certain negligence to the idea that the rest of the Democratic party should follow suit.
“I think it’s complicated for the president, but it’s less complicated for everyone else,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of the group Run for Something. She called it “classic Dem” to see an immediate split on how to message around the conviction.
“If we want people to think it’s a big deal, we need to tell them it’s a big deal,” she said.
For young voters in particular, Litman said that Democrats need to be clear about the conviction: “If you’re 18, you were 10 in 2016. You may not know anything about Stormy Daniels. For them, we’re not reminding them, it’s telling them for the first time.”
To a degree, the debate among Democrats over what the party can and should do about the Trump verdict is a proxy for how confident they feel about the Biden team’s capacity to win a second term. The president’s aides note that they ran in 2020 largely by letting Trump self-immolate and presenting Biden as a calmer, saner alternative.
But others in the party fear that the circumstances are different now than four years ago — that it was easier to play possum when Trump was the one in the White House. If the Biden team wants to turn 2024 into a choice election, they argue, it can’t adopt that same posture.
“There’s a lot of party leadership and people who control the resources and what happens in the party who want to get back to the old days of working across the aisle and morality trumping anything, but long gone are those days,” said a senior 2020 Biden campaign official, who was granted anonymity to give a candid assessment of the current strategy. “We’re playing a different game. This should be such a layup for us, and yet we might miss the shot.”
Jennifer Haberkorn, Eugene Daniels and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.
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