Or has it? Will voters make the connection between those two things? And will they connect the daily Trump bedlam to other aspects of his record — particularly on health care and the economy?

A new ad campaign by a leading Democratic-allied think tank — backed up by research — seeks to address this set of challenges. The effort underscores a strategic imperative Democrats believe they face: Persuading voters that the Daily Trump Show, with all its ugliness and all its craziness, isn’t just background noise — it has direct consequences for people’s lives.

AD

AD

The tagline of the campaign is “Chaos has a price,” which neatly captures what the campaign is designed to persuade voters to come to believe.

The ad campaign and research comes from CAP Action, the political arm of the Center for American Progress. CAP Action did an online survey in 11 battleground states — which Trump carried in 2016 by an aggregate of nearly 2 percentage points — with a focus on probing how voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Trump view all this.

The data suggest that voters who “somewhat disapprove” are not people who view Trump through the “resistance” prism. They are more willing to believe Trump is corrupt and willing to enrich himself off the presidency, but don’t really see him as criminal.

AD

Also, they don’t like the constant insults and are more inclined to believe his chaotic style renders him less effective, but they don’t really doubt his intentions; they think he does stand up for what he believes.

AD

However, the research also shows that those in the “somewhat disapprove” camp are very much inclined to doubt that Trump has kept key promises on the economy and on “draining the swamp.”

Very low percentages of them believe he’s kept his promise to increase wages, to fight corruption in Washington, to lower prescription drug prices and to make health care more affordable.

This is echoed in public polls, which have found that majorities disapprove of Trump’s handling of health care and show that Trump’s approval on the economy is slipping into negative territory (The CAP Action polling was done in February, before the coronavirus-induced slide into recession, so its findings might be underselling his problems on this front, which will now get worse with the downturn.)

AD

But all this leaves a challenge for Democrats: How to connect Trump’s personal qualities directly to those failures?

AD

“We found that Trump’s personality and erratic leadership really bother people, but we have to connect that to the economic reality they’re struggling with,” Navin Nayak, the president and executive director of CAP Action, told me.

“The whole core of this project is tying the frustrations people have in their own lives to Trump’s chaotic leadership style,” Nayak added. “People believe both of those things, but aren’t connecting the dots.”

The group is unveiling new ads that try to connect those dots, as part of a multimillion-dollar digital ad campaign targeting voters in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

AD

For instance, there’s this ad that shows a worried mother from southwestern Pennsylvania asking whether Trump will “tweet” out his plan to protect her and her daughter if they develop preexisting conditions (protections for which Trump is still trying to gut along with the Affordable Care Act).

AD

Then there’s this spot that shows a working class father in Iowa worrying that Trump isn’t concerned about developing a health-care plan, juxtaposed with a picture of a regal, scowling Trump visage stamped on a dollar bill, a visual meant to depict his megalomania.

And there’s this ad, which shows a Michigan woman who’s been laid off because of the coronavirus and lamenting that money is running out, while “chaos has a price” flashes on the screen.

AD

Behind this campaign is another frank acknowledgment of a challenge faced by Democrats: They’re well behind the Trump operation when it comes to fighting the digital wars. Reported infighting among Joe Biden’s campaign staff has hampered its ability to get a full digital operation up and running.

And so, as part of this new CAP Action campaign, the group will be working to build up digital coordination with other progressive groups. CAP Action says its public social media content — such as charts on Trump’s coronavirus response — got 30 million hits last month, and the group hopes to help the liberal infrastructure close the gap with Trump.

AD

The chaos surrounding Trump’s coronavirus response has provided an opening to both close that digital gap — homebound voters may well be more engaged online than ever — while also making a bigger case connecting the president’s pathologies to people’s lives.

AD

But that won’t complete the persuasion job.

“We have to keep reminding people that more Americans have gotten infected and will die because of this president’s chaotic approach and failure to prepare,” Nayak said. “But this same leadership style has consequences beyond the pandemic.”

And, of course, even if the price of the chaos is everywhere around us right now, there’s no telling what things will look like in two, three or six months, when we’ll be having an election — or supposed to be having one, anyway.