No other politician in American politics is as effective at uniting Democrats and irate conservatives.
In response to Trump’s announcement that he will run for president in 2024, President Joe Biden, party leaders, allied organisations, rank-and-file elected officials, and the campaign of Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who faces Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff next month, have vowed to defeat him – again – and have asked their supporters to send money.
Tuesday night in Florida, just moments after Trump made his intentions clear, the Democratic multiverse reacted with indignation and gave some indications of how they intend to fight back.
Donald Trump failed America, as stated in two videos broadcast by Biden’s campaign social media accounts, one earlier in the day and the other after Trump’s speech. The first footage, from Tuesday afternoon, contrasted Trump’s remarks on infrastructure with Biden’s signing of a bipartisan agreement to finance a number of new projects on a split-screen. The president’s team then released another video just after 9 p.m. ET, criticising Trump for “coddling radicals,” “attacking women’s rights,” and “inciting a violent mob” while in power.
This strategy of attack was incorporated into the party and other Democratic organisations’ list-building and fundraising campaigns. To “rush $20” its way, the Democratic National Committee urged supporters. Warnock wrote, “I realise you may be focused on Donald Trump tonight, but first we have focus on Georgia,” less than three weeks before his runoff. Please contribute to help me defeat @HerschelWalker, my opponent.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said the party was “eager to remind Americans what Trump brought America” in his own statement.
His list was extensive and featured a selection of impending assaults.
Harrison claimed that Trump “rigged the economy for the super rich,” appointed a “right-wing Supreme Court that overturned Roe and paved the way for extreme Republicans across the country to criminalise abortion,” and sow absolute chaos that culminated in inciting a mob to attack the Capitol to try to overturn an election he knew he had lost.
With Georgia in mind, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee requested contributions “to fight the Trump agenda” by writing those words across a picture of Walker and Trump and linking it to a donation page.
Progressive groups including MoveOn.org, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and the Sunrise Movement used the announcement to denounce Trump while enlisting like-minded individuals to sign up for follow-up outreach. The grassroots organisation known as Indivisible, which was established in the days following Trump’s victory in 2016, vowed to continue to scupper the former president’s political plans.
The group’s co-founder, Ezra Levin, bragged about Democratic-led denunciations of Trump during his administration before claiming, “We then beat him personally in 2020. In 2021, we defeated his candidates for the Georgia Senate. And most recently, in 2022, we defeated his MAGA candidates. Evidently, Trump is craving his nth defeat, and we’ll hand it to him.
Leading abortion rights organisations, meanwhile, have released blistering criticisms of Trump and his right-wing friends, who were overwhelmingly, if not completely, defeated in last week’s midterm elections.
President of NARAL Pro-Choice America Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that “there is no question that Donald Trump and the MAGA fanatics he embraced were the biggest losers last Tuesday.” “We will be happy to oblige him if he so much wants to have that experience again in two years.”
Although the political arm of Planned Parenthood was critical of Trump, it also cast a wider net in front of what some in both parties now anticipate to be a competitive Republican primary field in 2024.
Trump’s divisive and destructive agenda was massively rejected by voters in 2020, according to Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes. And they will reject it once more, regardless of whether Trump or one of his clones is pushing the agenda.
Leading Democratic figures and organisations warned against minimising the former president’s influence over the GOP.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s president, Jessica Post, stated that “Democratic gains in statehouses around the country will secure the path to the presidency, but we cannot be complacent.” “Donald Trump controls the Republican Party from the top down.”
On Twitter, David Plouffe, a former adviser to Obama, issued a warning: “Assume (Trump) might win again despite it all and act accordingly.”
Some made fun of the speech. “This speech is Trump’s message delivered with Jeb Bush’s enthusiasm and Ted Cruz’s personality,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, another former Obama aide.
A campaign to convert Democratic fury at Trump into support for the incumbent before his election against Walker also gained backing from Warnock’s Senate colleagues. AWN predictions indicate that Democrats have already kept control of the chamber, but a victory for Warnock would increase their tenuous lead.
Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii tweeted, “We don’t just need money, we need it kind of fast. The key thing you need to know about Trump announcing for re-election is that Raphael Warnock is in a runoff and it’s exactly 3 weeks from now.”
As he retweeted Schatz, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy added, “Warnock needs to make decisions on hiring and ad buys this week. Today is the day to give if you haven’t already. Can you make another donation if you’ve already made one? It is important.
The criticism was also voiced by some Republicans.
In her testimony to the House select committee looking into his behaviour on January 6, 2021, Sarah Matthews, a former press secretary for the Trump administration, referred to Trump’s performance as “one of the most low-energy, boring speeches I’ve ever heard from Trump.” Even the crowd seemed apathetic. Not exactly what you want when declaring a run for president.
The conservative publication National Review, which has mostly abandoned the former president, published an unsigned commentary on its website shortly after Trump’s speech with the simple title “No.”
The remainder of the field will provide much better alternatives than Trump, the magazine’s editors concluded, but it’s too early to predict how it will look.