Democrats can't agree on whether they’re laying a trap for the GOP over President Donald Trump's response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — or about to step in a Republican-designed one themselves.

Democrats are pushing for votes on fighting domestic terrorism and hate crimes as well as other moves aimed at pressuring Republicans to repudiate Trump. But some strategists warn Democrats should be careful about how deeply they wade into a fraught debate over identity politics — particularly one focused on Confederate statues that risks dividing the electorate.


Republicans, they say, may be trying to goad Democrats into talking about hot-button issues that fire up the GOP base more than they energize liberal voters. These Democratic pollsters and message crafters say that staying focused on Trump's claim that "many sides" were at fault in Charlottesville is more productive than lingering on the question of whether to take down Confederate monuments, in most cases.

Then there's former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, who says his opponents lose any time they focus on racial politics.

The question of how to address Confederate monuments in the Capitol appeared to initially split the two top congressional Democrats, although aides described the divergence as minimal. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California made a full-throated call for removing them, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York downplayed the issue and accused Trump and Bannon of “trying to divert attention away from” their own stances on white supremacist groups.

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"Do I see a debate about monuments playing in 2018? Unlikely,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist and former top aide to House Democrats' campaign wing. “Do I see the larger debate about a government that is embracing and defending white supremacists playing as an issue in the suburbs in 2018? For sure."

Even some civil rights activists echo Schumer in calling for less emphasis on toppling monuments to the slaveholding era and more pursuit of policy changes to combat racial inequities. At a Monday rally of 3,000-plus religious leaders on the National Mall hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton-founded National Action Network, health care and voting rights took top billing .

“If past is prologue, it’s important to have a laser focus on policy,” said Kirsten John Foy, the northeast regional director of Sharpton’s group. “Statues are important — the symbols of the Confederacy are powerful symbols that maintain a grip on our moral consciousness — but it’s policy that impacts people’s lives on a day-to-day basis.”

Yet Bannon, shortly before he left the White House earlier this month, all but invited Democrats to keep talking about racial politics.

“The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em,” he told the American Prospect. “I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Democrats are determined not to let Charlottesville fade into the background, even if they have different ideas to force the issue. Schumer has highlighted the voting rights of minorities, pressing Trump to disband the commission his White House created to probe baseless theories of massive voter fraud. House Democrats have pitched 16 amendments responding to Charlottesville ahead of next month’s floor debate on a massive government spending bill.

Three of those amendments would target funding for Confederate monuments, threatening to push the risky removal debate back to the fore when lawmakers return to Washington. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) also are readying legislation that would remove Confederate statues from the Capitol.

“Our country should be a place that welcomes all people no matter race, gender or nationality and that should be reflected in the U.S. Capitol,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a Monday statement. “The removal of Confederate memorabilia from this nation is long overdue.”

House Republicans in June 2015 blocked a vote on a Thompson proposal to remove his state’s Confederate flag imagery from the Capitol and the following month had to pull a spending bill from the floor amid internal dissent over the issue. The GOP is unlikely to allow votes this year on any similarly contentious amendments this year.

But Democrats are preparing to seize any opportunity they can to box in Republicans in light of Trump’s unpopular handling of the Charlottesville conflagration.

“There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to anything,” one House Democratic leadership aide said. “But if there’s a district where there’s a vulnerable incumbent who made stupid remarks after the president’s stupid remarks, who votes ... a certain way, then you have a narrative.”

In the Senate, the nomination of longtime Trump adviser Sam Clovis as the Agriculture Department’s chief scientist also could provide an opening for Democrats to put Republicans on the defensive. Clovis has previously echoed claims of the “birther” movement that falsely contended former President Barack Obama was not born in America and made other racially inflammatory comments.

“The Trump administration is promoting discrimination on multiple fronts,” one senior Senate Democratic aide said. “It would be a mistake for Democrats not to confront discrimination wherever it appears, in the wake of Charlottesville. Focusing on just one area lets many others go unchecked.”

Yet focusing on Confederate monuments could be a pitfall for Democrats, who also are trying to turn their attention ahead of next year's midterms to an economic agenda that's had a rocky rollout. Multiple Democratic pollsters have tested strategies how to talk about monuments and racial issues, finding no clear consensus on Americans' appetite for removing the statues from public spaces.

Meanwhile, civil rights advocates continue to urge that Confederate iconography remain a part of the debate. Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, suggested that Schumer and other Democrats wary of statue removal distracting from Trump's comments on white supremacy "talk about how we can do both."

Veteran Democratic strategist and ad maker Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, recommended that the party's candidates "follow our values" when it comes to thorny racial issues.

"At the end of the day, America and most voters are pretty smart on this stuff," Longabaugh said. "I don't think Bannon is going to fool anybody with his outright racist appeals."