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From California to Indiana, via New Jersey, Democrats discussed ways to expand and protect health care, while arming the president's rhetoric – a tactic that has largely is losing the spotlight to the national media, but which, as many Democrats see it, makes it possible to focus more on what voters in their districts wanted to talk about.
If the Democrats regain their majority in the House, as leaders on both sides of the aisle now predict, the practice of snubbing Trump on the trunk – unlike the Republicans who have remained close to him – could change his way to think of engaging with a president who often seemed impeccable their attacks. But if the Democrats fail to turn the House to the blue, the strategy will be widely considered a failure, proving that the Democrats still have not figured out how to communicate with Trump two years after his election.
"This is not a deliberate strategy to ignore President Trump, it's just," said Chrissy Houlahan, first-time candidate and former fighter in a district that winds through the suburbs from Philadelphia to a more rural area of Pennsylvania after knocking on doors Sunday. "It's just not worth the air or the antenna time we give it."
Houlahan was not questioned once on Trump during her one-hour visit to Coatesville, an economically depressed town on the outskirts of the so-called Philadelphia counties. Voters instead asked him questions about education, housing policy and strategies to make the city safer.
"Frankly," said Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, campaigning for Democrats on the other side of the Atlantic, "the president deserves to be ignored.
"I trust voters are talking to me and voters here are talking about health care," said Andy Kim, Democratic candidate for the 3rd Congressional District of New Jersey. "I would say that voters do not bite at the hook, they are not distracted by the issues that interest them."
Kim's run against Republican Representative Tom MacArthur is a zero point for the health care and tax debate, and is considered nationally as a way to test whether the two issues were as powerful as believe the Democrats this year. MacArthur is the author of a key amendment to the bill on the repeal of health care and is the only Republican in New Jersey to support the tax plan, a vote that has angered the voters in New Jersey because it forbade them to crush their high property taxes.
These votes did not go unnoticed in the district and caused Congressman MacArthur, who won 60% of the vote in 2016, to fear losing his bid for reelection.
"It was disqualifying," said Lisa Cenneno, a 48-year-old independent who voted for MacArthur two years ago, about the Republican's vote on health care. "He says he cares about his constituents.I do not find him because he does not want to listen to us all, he only wants to listen to the voters who give him money."
MacArthur declined repeated interview requests for this story.
In the final months of the campaign, it was clear that Trump was aware that health care was a priority issue for voters. In speeches and on Twitter over the past month, he criticized the Democrats' support for universal health care and sought to mitigate Republican attacks aimed at canceling protections over pre-existing conditions with a series of remarks that are patently false or extremely misleading.
Trump spent the weekend looking for candidates in West Virginia, Indiana, Montana, Georgia and Tennessee, delivering a bellicose message about immigration and lamenting the fact that it was not "as exciting" to discuss booming economic statistics.
The president used his rallies to stir up fear of migrants, regularly using misleading or false information to do so.
"These are rough people, in many cases," Trump said of the migrants who were crossing Mexico during a speech on Saturday in Georgia. Earlier in the week, he lamented that it was not "as exciting" to discuss booming economic statistics.
Trump's strategy is a pure base game: he and his White House advisers believe that if they can engage the same voters as those who tipped Trump into the White House two years ago, they can resist the story midway through.
"I think we're going to get out of the House, but as you know, I focused primarily on the Senate," Trump said. "And I think we are doing very well in the Senate."
Some Republicans are skeptical and want the President to spend more time talking about the economy, an issue that resonates more with suburban voters who are likely to decide mid-term in key races in the House. But these prospects, as well as the promises often announced by Republicans to place tax reform at the center of the 2018 campaigns, have disappeared, helped by the fact that Trump had admitted that earlier promises to enact a second law of tax reform in 2018 were largely catastrophic.
Trump "conjures up all those buzzwords that cause a frenzy in the base," said Kim Schrier, a Democrat who runs in the 8th Congressional District of Washington State. But, she added, "we all teach our children that we are better than that and that kind of rhetoric is unacceptable, and I hope it will bring a lot of people too, saying," No, we do not tolerate this division and stir up a frenzy. "
While Democrats on the ballot avoided Trump, national figures from the Democratic Party – former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden – mingled with the president during the election campaign.
Biden told voters in Pennsylvania Sunday that Tuesday's election was aimed at "restoring the moral sense of this nation," accusing Trump of "fueling the fire of intolerance and legitimizing". people who should never be heard. "
But what surprised some members of the party was how the Democrats, moderates in the Trump districts raised to double digits in 2016 to more progressive candidates holding safe Democratic seats, managed not to talk about the president.
Anthony Brindisi, in upstate New York, defies political gravity and offers Republican Claudia Tenney a close run in a district that the president has won by 16 points. And he does it by ignoring Trump, a direct contrast to Tenney's tactics.
"This race will depend on myself and Claudia Tenney because at the end of the day we are the names on the ballot," said Brindisi. "People are looking for someone who can unite people (now) and has made a career trying to divide people."
Brindisi's speech focuses primarily on his local roots, promises to improve access to education and will oppose efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He ends his full support for Medicare for All.
Liuba Grechen Shirley, a more progressive candidate for the first time against Republican Rep. Peter King on Long Island and a supporter of Medicare for All, shared Brindisi's view of Trump's efforts and efforts to scramble the debate.
"It's easy (to focus primarily on health care)," she said. "We organize roundtables, town halls and meetings in the district.We focus on different topics, but each of them turns into conversation about health care.It's always the first something people are talking about is at the doorstep: health care and then taxes. "
This strategy has also been reflected in democratic spending. In 2018, democratic campaigns generated an impressive $ 331 million in health care announcements, according to CMAG data, which represents 53% of all TV ads by party candidates this year .
The anti-Trump messaging comes in eighth, with only 11% of Democratic ads channeling antipathy at least directly to the president.
The candidates have made Trump a target of their campaign are usually those running against Republicans who have tried to stand out from him. In the suburbs of Philadelphia, Democrat Scott Wallace, who says he decided to run for the first time because of Trump and the tax vote, does not hesitate to mention the leader of the party, Republican Brian Fitzpatrick.
Wallace, while he was knocking on the doors Sunday, regularly told voters that Tuesday's election was "the first chance for us to say something about what's going on in Washington" and the best chance "to send a message" to the capital.
Wallace explained that the logic behind his interest in national politics is Fitzpatrick. The Republican tried to distance himself from the GOP, even telling his Democratic opponent during a debate to "keep the party tags out of" the competition. What did Wallace do? Only noted that Fitzpatrick was, in fact, a Republican.
"It's a moderate district, it's trying to please moderate centrists and Trump people," Wallace told CNN on Sunday. "For me, it 's like trying to ride a fence, a foot on one side and the other on the other." And from a guy's point of view, that's Is a good way to hurt yourself. "
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