Trump-Warren split screen offers an overview of the 2020 campaign

RENO, Nevada – Within hours, Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump gave an overview of what the 2020 presidential campaign might look like in a battlefield state.

It will not be pretty.

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Here, in front of a raucous mob Saturday at the Nevada Democratic Party's state convention, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts dumped on a president whom she said represents "hatred, ugliness and the cruelty."

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto followed, calling Trump "ignorant", his "disgusting" immigration policy.

At the southern tip of the state, shortly after landing in Las Vegas for a speech at the state GOP convention, the president spoke directly to the party's base – and only their.

"I was elected largely because we are strong at the border," Trump reminded the crowd.

Then he made fun of Warren, as he often did, under the name of "Pocahontas", giving him a new nickname, Jacky Rosen, Democratic Senate candidate, and cast a veiled insult to Republican Senator John McCain, who is suffering from brain cancer. .

We are far from 2020, but Saturday's split screen sketched not only the tone of the upcoming presidential election, but also one of the crucial issues – the president's immigration policy and its effects on the electoral participation of Latin Americans.

Trump has largely avoided the controversy surrounding his separation of children and his parents at the border, dismissing any electoral advantage for Democrats in the midst of the fallout from his administration's policy of zero tolerance.

But Democrats here in Reno have seen the controversy on the border as a fuel for their efforts to save and make Latino voters in hopes of ousting Republican Senator Dean Heller in 2018 – and putting the government on the road. State out of reach for Trump in 2020.

In recent months, Democrats and leftist groups have poured millions of dollars into these initiatives in Nevada, seeking to replicate an effort that helped the Democrats win victories in 2016, while relentlessly tying Republicans to Trump .

"Until a week ago, we thought that Dreamers and repel the Republican attacks on the shrine [policies] That would be the main debate on immigration, "said Jeff Parcher, of the Washington-based Center for Community Change Action, as part of an affiliation of groups planning to spend $ 3 million to vote for voters with low propensity. "But of course, now the question at the border has gone all over the place."

Last week, the consortium began testing online ads about Trump's abandoned policy of separating migrant families at the border. In one place, a girl is photographed shaking an adult's leg next to the warning, "Trump and the GOP agenda tear apart families."

Democrats were preparing Sunday to add a board to the state party's platform formally opposing the separation of parents and children at the border.

Cortez Masto, the first Latina senator, said Trump "is coming down a dangerous path."

"This type of anti-immigrant attack is not only going to have a positive impact on Latinos in general," she said. "I think it's just every minority population that it attacks."

Speaking in a ballroom next to a bowling alley in a resort and a casino here, Warren and Rosen, a congressman from the Las Vegas area, told delegates that they were going to visit the US-Mexico border. to see first hand what happens to these innocent children, and what we can do to help them. "

Rosen's remarks came a few days after she mounted a Spanish-language ad on Telemundo to run during the World Cup, promising to fight "Trump's dirty game of separating mothers from their children".

Steve Sisolak, the Democratic nominee for governor, released a video accusing his Republican opponent, Attorney General Adam Laxalt, of "giving a free pass to Trump" while "children cry for their parents".

For many Democrats, Trump's border separation policy is reminiscent of a 2016 election in which images of Latinos who were voting in taco trucks northeast of Las Vegas and lined up in front of a Las Vegas grocery store presaged a rare victory for the party. presidential election year. The Nevada Democrats in 2016 not only delivered the state to Hillary Clinton, but also sent Cortez Masto to the Senate and took over the state legislature.

Yet, despite the growing importance of the state's Latino electoral bloc – Latinos now account for nearly 30 percent of Nevada's population – Latinos traditionally vote at lower rates than white voters, particularly mediocre in the mid-term elections. In a disastrous election for the Nevada Democrats in 2014, the low turnout in the Latin American parts of Clark County helped Republicans sweep the elections nationwide and take the two chambers of parliament.

In an effort to avoid a repeat, a group of left-wing organizations, including the Super PAC Planned Parenthood Votes, International Union of Service Employees and Center for Community Change Action, announced plans in April to spend $ 30 million. dollars on efforts to achieve low propensity voters in key states, including $ 3 million in Nevada.

The Democratic State Party holds bilingual telephone banks and offers voter registration training in Spanish, while the powerful Local 226 of the Culinary Workers Union is planning a similar campaign to 2016, when 300 workers took a two-month holiday. election, knock on 350,000 doors.

Meanwhile, Voto Latino aims to register 1 million voters by 2020 in Nevada and other rich Latino countries. And NextGen America, the billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, has designated $ 2 million for the registration and participation of young voters in Nevada, much of which is organized around immigration. On Saturday, the group planned to co-host a protest related to separations of immigrant families outside the Trump appearance in Las Vegas.

"This gives us a very good opening," said Bob Fulkerson, state director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of the Nevada Action Fund, a progressive group that manages registration and participation operations in the United States. State.

"It has never been so easy to raise money – I mean, people are upset and they want to know what they can do," he said. "I have been a paid organizer in Nevada since 1984, and that kind of intensity, that kind of fire … that's what we dream of."

Fulkerson, who is organizing a protest against Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a security conference in Reno on Monday, said that prior to the outcry sparked by Trump's separations, a Facebook page devoted to the protest had received about 4,000 views. By the end of last week, he said, there were 27,000.

When Sessions arrives in Reno, he says, "We will block the entries. … we will block the streets. "

Local Republicans sought to defuse the effects of Trump's border controversy by refocusing attention on the state's booming economy. Following a recession felt more deeply in Nevada than most other states, the unemployment rate here is now less than 5 percent.

"I think that's the question, and I think that's one of the reasons people continue to give the president a chance on other issues," he said. Greg Ferraro, Republican advisor and adviser to the Republican state governor, Brian Sandoval. "The economy is the ballast, and I think people are willing to give the president a lot of latitude as the economy continues to grow at a steady pace."

But Trump's tough line on immigration continues to force Republicans to move cautiously in Nevada, fearing to alienate Latino voters from the state.

Heller, who is widely regarded as the most vulnerable Republican senator seeking re-election this year, is publicly opposed to the policy of separating children, although he does not keep a distance from the president. Trump was scheduled to attend a fundraiser for Heller in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican consultant who specializes in Latino politics, compared the resonance of border separations with the fury surrounding Trump's response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year.

"This is not your traditional Trumpism here," he said. "When you start seeing the Republican leadership go out, and the Republicans elected to start shaking in their boots, you know it's important, and the only other time I've seen is Charlottesville." … it really puts the Republican Party in a bad position halfway. "

Andres Ramirez, a Nevada-based Democratic strategist and former vice president of the Democratic National Committee's Caucus, said Trump did more for Latino participation in Nevada than the Democrats could hope to accomplish on their own.

"There is not much the Democrats could have done that would have mobilized and invigorated the Latinos more than what the Trump administration did this week," said Ramirez, a former senator's aide. Harry Reid. "Now that these immigrants are reinvigorated, this gives the Democrats an opportunity to hone their message and make sure that [Latinos] vote in these elections. "

The border controversy, said Ramirez, "helped revive the Latin American community." Now, he said, they are "in attack mode".

At the Democratic State Convention, Warren, a potential presidential candidate of 2020, seized this impulse, urging Democrats to "fight back" with her against Trump.

"He called the immigrant animals, he complained about people coming from" shithole "countries," she said. "And now, Trump wants to create new family detention camps to lock up more people, triggering a whole new crisis. "

The crowd yelled when Warren said, "I'm going to McAllen, Texas, tomorrow, and I'm going to take the message directly from Nevada: we will fight for the soul of our nation."