Some Democrats Getting Anxious of a Trump 2016 Repeat: ‘We’ve Seen This Story Before’

While Democrats should be pleased with the Tuesday indictment of former President Donald Trump, some of them have expressed concern that they could be walking straight into a trap.

Politico reported that Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif) has said, “Last time people were rooting for Donald Trump, he ended up president of the United States. We’ve seen this story before.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to former President Barack Obama, stated that Trump is a “tremendously flawed candidate.” Still, he added that one can’t declare him the weakest because none of these other Republicans have been on the national stage before. He further added that any Republican, including Trump, could win the election due to the Electoral College’s contours.

Democrats and mainstream news outlets had anticipated Hillary Clinton would handily defeat Trump in 2016. Polls had also depicted Trump well behind Clinton in swing states, although he eventually emerged victorious. Rick Wilson, an anti-Trump strategist who helped establish the Lincoln Project, claims that there are similarities between the 2016 and 2024 elections. With Trump in the media’s spotlight yet again, every corporate news outlet, from Fox to NBC News, features him as their lead story.

“A lot of Democrats in 2016 were like, ‘Oh yes, Hillary will wipe the floor with Donald Trump.’ And I warned them at the time: Don’t you bite that apple,” Wilson said. “I feel like we’re in a very, very twisted time loop where God is punishing us for our sins.”

Following the 2016 win, several Democrats made statements to adopt a different approach toward Trump. Strategists told Politico that Trump will likely be the easiest candidate to beat in the general election race in 2024.

“I’d say in a general election, Trump may be the weakest of the significant GOP contenders,” Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh informed the news outlet. “And he likely will take on more water over time as several of the other legal cases play out.”

Anne Caprara, a former 2016 Clinton super PAC leader, even argued that the odds are stacked against Trump in 2024. “When we dealt with Trump the first time around, he was a different quantity. People knew him as an entertainer, and he had this kind of bulletproof image…people saw him as this successful businessman who they’d grown up with or seen on TV for so many years,” she remarked. “And I just think he’s got a much different image now.”

Joe Caiazzo, a former Clinton campaign surrogate, agreed and stated that the former president could suffer the consequences of the indictment. “It’s tough to tell where the public will be by the fall of 2024, but getting indicted has never served a candidate well,” he said.