President Biden’s advisers are reportedly weighing a midterm election strategy specifically focused on Donald Trump’s unlikely return to Twitter.
The advisers, who have been criticized for having “no finalized, comprehensive strategy for the midterms,” may opt again to campaign against Donald Trump, who is not on the ballot. Democrats were crushed in November when they last deployed a campaign focus on the former president.
Trump has publicly said he will not return to Twitter even if Elon Musk reinstates him to the platform. “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News.
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Award 2020 on December 01, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. (Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images)
But as Democrats have struggled to overcome Biden’s 40-year-high inflation and southern border invasion, many advisers believe that distracting voters from Biden’s failures by focusing on Trump may yield political results, Politico reported:
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter raised the chance that Trump could be reinstated to the social media platform, where he had more than 80 million followers before being banned in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot. Musk has said he would allow Trump to return, and while the ex-president has claimed he doesn’t want back on, the White House does not believe him.
The consensus among Biden aides about Trump’s possible return: it could cut both ways. While the former president would eat up an extraordinary amount of political oxygen, it’s also possible that he would push the Big Lie or feud with fellow Republicans and damage the GOP’s otherwise strong chances of regaining at least one house of Congress. The more the election becomes about Trump, the better the Democrats’ chances become, many in Biden’s orbit believe.
President Joe Biden speaks in the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington, Thursday, April 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“The biggest ally we have is Trump himself,” Saul Shorr, a Democrat media consultant, told the Washington Post. “He’s not going to allow Chris Christie or Ron DeSantis or anyone else define the future of the Republican Party. He wants the decision of whether to run again be something that he alone decides.”
Democrats appear to be singing a different tune from November, when they were shellacked in many local and state races, including Virginia’s gubernatorial race. After the string of nationwide defeats, Democrats admitted focusing on Trump was a failure.
“As long as Donald Trump is a former president, I think Democrats have a responsibility to look more to the future,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) said.
Sean McElwee, executive director for Data For Progress, told the Daily Beast that making politics just about Trump is not always a successful strategy.
“Trump is a uniquely unpopular and polarizing figure, and I think it’s a playbook that worked for a long time,” McElwee said. “But last night shows there are ways for Republicans to inoculate themselves against it.”
Yet without Trump, Democrats appear to have no strategy to combat the red wave. “There’s no overarching document that outlines the president’s involvement in key races, nor a set message that will carry the party through November,” the Post reported in April.
“Democratic strategists say the White House is still moving too slowly and remains too disorganized ahead of the midterms, when many Democrats fear their party will lose control of the House and possibly the Senate,” the Post continued.
In April, Politico predicted Republicans will dominate the midterms by reclaiming the House and Senate. Redistricting expert and senior editor of the Cook Political Report, David Wasserman, also believes Republicans will have a huge advantage in midterms based on his experience.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.