The Democratic Party plans to focus its messages for 2024 on attacking Republicans who supported former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, according to a memo circulated on Wednesday – while President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign also announced that he would portray Trump as a threat to democracy in a major campaign speech on Saturday.
Key Facts
The memo anticipates that denial of the election will cost Republicans in the 2024 presidential elections, highlighting the Republican Party’s losses in the 2022 midterm elections, including four Senate candidates who failed and were backed by Trump and promoted his false claims that the election was stolen, which led to Republicans losing control of the Senate.
The memo was led by the Democratic National Committee, which NBC first reported, accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican from Louisiana) of his role in helping Trump dispute the results of the 2020 presidential election, when Johnson aided in drafting a debunked legal theory suggesting that election results in some states were invalid because they changed electoral rules to adapt to pandemic restrictions.
The memo warned that Johnson would leverage Republican power in the House to “advance Donald Trump’s political ambitions in 2024” with the help of Trump’s allies in Congress, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican from Georgia) and New Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (Republican from Virginia).
What to Watch For
Biden will deliver a speech on Saturday to commemorate the third anniversary of January 6 from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the Continental Army emerged from its winter camp as an organized force equipped to confront the British Army. Biden will draw parallels between the significance of the site and the 2024 presidential election and the fate of American democracy, reminding voters of Trump’s efforts to dispute the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to his campaign. The speech is one of Biden’s most important reelection campaign events to date and comes less than two weeks before the start of the caucuses on January 15 with Iowa meetings. Biden will travel to South Carolina on Monday to deliver a speech at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the historic Black church where nine worshippers were killed by a white supremacist in a mass shooting in 2015.
Background
While Trump still wields significant influence over the Republican Party since losing the 2020 presidential election, there are some signs indicating that Trump has negatively impacted the party as his favored candidates have lost a series of high-stakes congressional races in recent years. These losses cost Republicans control of the Senate and a broader majority in the House during the 2022 midterm elections. Trump is expected to secure the Republican nomination and face Biden in the general election, and while polls show that most Americans do not want to see either on the ballot in November, an increasing number of polls indicate that Americans trust Trump more than Biden in handling both the economy and the Israel-Hamas war, which are key issues for voters in 2024. The anticipated matchup is expected to be a close race, with Trump leading Biden by 2 points in the polls, according to the RealClearPolitics average, although it remains unclear how the outcomes of Trump’s various criminal cases will affect his chances of winning the election.
Side Note
Trump faces a full slate of criminal charges totaling 91 counts across four indictments related to his involvement in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, his handling of classified documents after leaving office, and a New York criminal case accusing him of orchestrating illegal hush money payments. It is unclear how a conviction in any of these cases could affect voters or whether the cases will even go to trial before November. Some polls indicate that a majority of voters, 58% according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, believe that Trump committed serious federal crimes, while 62% of Republicans also believe he should remain the party’s nominee if he wins the primaries and is later convicted of a crime.
What
We Don’t Know
Whether the Democrats’ plans to portray Republicans as a threat to democracy will affect voters. The economy is consistently ranked as the most important issue for voters, with 75% of participants in an Associated Press/NORC poll in December indicating it was extremely important or very important, compared to 67% who said the same about the future of democracy in the United States.
The Big Number
62%. This is the percentage of Americans who said they believe Biden won legitimately, down from 69% in December 2021, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll in December, indicating increasing Republican loyalty to Trump.
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