Clinton allies gather ammo to blunt Trump nomination

Columbia / AP

Hillary Clinton, fresh off her South Carolina primary landslide, is shifting her focus to Republican front-runner Donald Trump as her party seeks consensus on the best ways to challenge the billionaire’s unpredictable nature in a general election campaign.
As Clinton nears the 11 state contests to be decided on Super Tuesday this week, allies of the former secretary of state, unaffiliated Democratic strategists and the national party are stockpiling potential ammunition about Trump, reviewing reams of court filings, requesting information about his business dealings from state governments and conducting new polls to test lines of attack.
Among the likely options: Questioning Trump’s qualifications and temperament to be president, scrutinizing his business practices and bankruptcy filings, and re-airing his inflammatory statements about women and minorities who will be central to the Democrats’ efforts in November.
“Is this the guy you would trust with the nuclear codes? Is this the guy you would trust with your son or daughter in the military? Is this the guy you would trust to run the economy?” asked Gov. Dan Malloy of Connecticut, a Clinton backer, pointing to a likely argument from Democrats.
Clinton, celebrating her rout of Democratic rival Bernie Sanders in South Carolina’s primary, took direct aim at Trump’s message on Saturday night, telling supporters, “Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again. America never stopped being great.”
While party leaders see Clinton in a favorable position against Trump, they caution that the real estate mogul has shown a mastery of the media and an ability to stay on offense throughout the Republican primaries. And they acknowledge Trump has successfully tapped into a deep vein of economic insecurity running through the electorate.
“Any race he is in is unpredictable,” said David Brock, a Clinton supporter who oversees several Democratic super political action committees that support the former secretary of state. “Any strategy we come up with today is going to have to be awfully flexible because we don’t know what to expect from this guy.”
Clinton aides and allies also worry that Trump’s unorthodox constituency of working-class white voters might allow him to put more states in play — particularly Midwestern swing states like Ohio and Wisconsin — compared to past nominees like Mitt Romney and John McCain. And they note large voter turnouts in Republican primaries won by Trump.
But Democrats predict a Trump nomination could have a splintering effect on the Republican Party and are looking for ways to exacerbate it.
A new survey of 800 likely Republican voters commissioned by a Democratic polling firm found that 20 percent of Republicans are “uncertain” whether they would back Trump or Clinton in a head-to-head match-up.
The number included one-quarter of Catholics and one-third of moderates, according to the survey by the Democracy Corps’ Republican Party Project shared with The Associated Press.
The poll found Trump’s share of the vote drops among Catholics and moderates when Democrats describe him as an “ego-maniac,” ‘‘disrespectful to women,” untrustworthy with the nation’s nuclear weapons and supporting a “big oil agenda.”
Republicans, Democrats argue, haven’t mounted a sustained campaign to undermine Trump’s image as a successful dealmaker. They envision a more extensive critique that would galvanize minority voters and women against Trump.
Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY’s List, which backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights, said Trump’s derogatory comments about women during the primaries would mobilize female voters. She said as the “head of the party,” Trump would influence Senate races in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Florida.