MILWAUKEE – Thrown off kilter by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, the Democratic Party’s messaging came into sharper focus Tuesday as the party’s surrogates punched back on Republicans’ economic policies, while standing firm about the threat they argue Trump poses to U.S. democracy.
At a morning press conference Tuesday, the party found a voice in New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who grew emotional as he acknowledged the calls to cool inflammatory rhetoric in the wake of Saturday’s shooting at a Trump event.
“This is a vote on policy, America. Choose who’s going to be best for the bottom line of your family,” Booker said. “But God, in this time, look for leaders that lead with love.”
“Look for people that don’t just say, ‘tamp down the rhetoric.’ … Support the people that know that even though you don’t vote for me, you’re not my enemy.”
The shooting has sent shock waves through the Republican National Convention, where the former president attended his first public event Monday since a bullet pierced his ear at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday.
Some Republicans have accused Democrats and President Biden of engaging in dangerous rhetoric, blaming them for attempt on Trump’s life. On Monday, Biden in an NBC News interview he admitted he made a “mistake” by saying it was time to put a “bullseye” on Trump.
Democrats pull back programming in wake of Trump assassination attempt
Democrats widely condemned the shooting and scaled back their campaign messaging in its immediate aftermath.
Since then, the party has struggled to be heard above the din of the four-day Republican jamboree in Milwaukee, a key swing state, as Democrats already were wrestling with concerns over Biden’s age and fitness for office.
The Biden campaign said Saturday evening that it was pausing its advertising after the attempt on Trump’s life. It canceled plans for a press conference Monday morning in Milwaukee featuring surrogates from its campaign.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Biden campaign national advisory board member who had been expected to be part of the counterprogramming effort, had no confirmed plans to be at the convention as of Tuesday.
Democrats eased back into campaigning against Trump with a Monday evening call after he announced his running mate.
Biden campaign officials, including Jen O’Malley Dillon, criticized the records of Trump and his vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. And they said that Biden, who is campaigning in Nevada on Tuesday and Wednesday, would continue to make that case.
“I think President Biden, Vice President Harris have never shied away from laying bare the stakes of this election,” Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo said. “In our view, that is not at odds with the effort that both are leading to sort of restore civility to our politics and to unite this country.”
In his NBC interview with Lester Holt, Biden said Vance has adopted the “same policies” on Trump from abortion rights to climate change. He told reporters as he left for Las Vegas that Vance is a “clone of Trump on the issues.”
A source familiar said the Biden campaign will resume its ads as soon as this week but did not provide additional specifics.
Democrats battle to recapture working-class voters
On Tuesday morning, Democrats focused on countering Republicans’ promise to deliver for America’s working class, a theme of the first day of the convention.
“They pretended that they are a pro-worker, pro-union party. But … America saw right through their act,” Quentin Fulks, a Biden-Harris deputy campaign manager, said at the top of the press conference.
Their remarks come as some parts of the GOP have ventured into a new brand of economic populism. On Monday, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien had railed against big business in a primetime address at the convention and called out politicians who oppose labor unions regardless of their party.
Vance is a strident critic of the party’s internationalist wing who has voiced his support for antitrust legislation, and, like Biden, visited a United Auto Workers picket line.
It’s unclear how much sway Vance would hold in a second Trump term. And his views remain remain unconventional among traditional Republicans who remain committed to a low-taxes, pro-business agenda.
Democrats emphasized on Tuesday morning that Trump spent his four-year term continuing the GOP’s opposition to labor unions. Trump’s flagship legislative achievement in office was a tax cut that many analysts said disproportionately benefited wealthy individuals.
The Trump campaign, which did not immediately return a request for comment, has argued unions and the middle class support them. At Tuesday’s press conference, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler dismissed that talk as “spin.”
Biden “was the first sitting American president to walk a union picket line,” Shuler said. “JD Vance showed up for the first time ever. … And it was basically in preparation for his political career.”
She posed the question to voters: “’Will my life be better when Trump lets my company force me to work overtime, without overtime pay?’ People don’t think it’s possible in the year 2024, but it is, according to Project 2025,” a policy platform backed by many Republicans.
Ben Wikler, the chair of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party, lambasted a Trump-backed effort by the technology company Foxconn to expand its operations in Milwaukee. The effort failed to deliver on key promises despite substantial public investment. Under Biden, Microsoft is pursuing plans to build a data center on the same land, Wikler said.
“What we saw from Donald Trump was broken promises and empty rhetoric,” Wikler said. “Joe Biden and (Vice President) Kamala Harris actually kept their word.”
Booker drew a contrast between former Vice President Mike Pence, who earned Trump’s ire when he resisted the former president’s calls to decertify the 2020 presidential election, and Vance, who has said he would not have certified the 2020 race. Pence has declined to endorse Trump’s re-election bid.
“Vice President Pence did the right thing for our democracy,” Booker said. “Now (Trump has) chosen a vice president who said that he would not have done that.”
If Vance was vice president then, Booker continued, “he would have lurched our country perhaps into its worst constitutional crisis in my lifetime and generations before. … This is a stark choice, folks.”
USA TODAY reporter Francesca Chambers contributed to this story.
