Democrats are zeroing in on the future of democracy and former President Trump’s response to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as part of their closing pitch to voters two weeks out from Election Day.
Up and down the ballot, Democrats say they are hoping to win over key swing voters on the issue as they seek to broaden their coalition of supporters. Vice President Harris has used the issue to appeal to persuadable swing voters and even some Republicans.
But it’s unclear whether the issue will be a determining factor in how voters cast their ballots. According to a Gallup poll released earlier this month, 52 percent of voters polled said the economy was “extremely important” to them, while 49 percent said the same about democracy in the U.S.
“We all should have democracy and freedom as a top-of-mind issue,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. “Not to dilute any of the other issues because without democracy and freedom, none of the other [issues] flow the way they should.”
Harris and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a vocal Trump critic, hit the campaign trail Monday in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where Cheney said democracy was on the ballot.
The effort is also being deployed further down the ballot to state legislature races. On Wednesday, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) rolled out a memo on how state legislatures are “key to preventing the next insurrection.”
“We see this level of the ballot very much as the building blocks of our democracy,” said Will Rusche, vice president of marketing and communications at the DLCC. “We have a dozen examples in the states of state legislatures who, based on what we saw in 2020, have shown their willingness to go along with these types of challenges to our democracy and our elections.”
Democrats say the messaging not only plays into the Harris campaign’s broader theme of protecting freedoms but also their strategy of painting Trump as chaotic and divisive.
The party says the issue has the capacity to increase turnout among its base while appealing to independents and some persuadable Republicans.
“All of the naysayers in an off-year election, during the 2022 midterms, said this was not an important issue to Americans, that it was a mistake for Democrats to focus on it,” said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist. “And Democrats did really, really well.”
Democrats point to Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race in 2022, when Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) hit his Republican opponent, state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), as a radical on the issue. Republicans note Mastriano was a particularly weak candidate, but Democrats point to Shapiro’s successes among swing voters and even some Republicans in the state that year.
Republicans are not convinced this is a winning issue for their opponents.
“This message is honestly not only too abstract, it’s too Beltway and too woke,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. “A lot of these people that we’re talking about, especially in the blue wall states, they tend to be working class, they tend to be populists, and they’re struggling to make ends meet.”
“The idea that somehow Liz Cheney is going to turn some votes over is insane,” he added.
Democrats push back on this notion, arguing that the images and footage from Jan. 6 continue to be palpable on the campaign trail.
“It’s the most visible and valid point that every American was able to witness in real time, and there are receipts,” Seawright said.
O’Connell pointed to a Washington Post poll conducted earlier this year, prior to President Biden dropping out of the race, showing 38 percent of swing-state voters saying they trust Trump to handle threats to democracy, while 29 percent said the same about Biden. The same poll found that 73 percent of voters did not believe Trump would accept the results of the election.
Trump himself has attempted to flip the script on Harris over the issue.
“Kamala Harris is a threat to democracy — she ignored the will of millions of primary voters to become the Democrat Party nominee, and she and Joe Biden weaponized our justice system in order to sway an election. President Trump will save our democracy,” said Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, noting that Trump will spend the final weeks of the campaign talking about inflation, the southern border and violent crime.