Thursday on MSNBC, Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is “appealing to the hate wing” of the GOP.

Epstein said, “Well, I think she’s far ahead of Trump in most of the polls and higher than 2 percent and head-to-head with other candidates that at this point there’s not that much concern because the campaigns haven’t begun. But look, I think Trump, in terms of the Republican primaries, he’s at 35 percent, 40 in a couple polls only, in a field of 17. As soon as that field narrows to four or five candidates, I think that will change.”

He continued, ‘With respect to the spat between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Republicans lost the women’s vote by 55-44 percent in 2012. This kind of argument — these kind of statements which most women find degrading, properly so, are going to dig a deeper hole for Donald Trump. What Donald Trump is doing, is he’s appealing to the hate wing of the Republican party with all the degrading comments about Muslims, about women, about Hispanics. But it’s only about 15 percent of the national electorate. And so when you look at his numbers nationally, his negatives are about 56 percent, easily pushed up into the 60s once there is a campaign against him. His negatives among Republican voters are 40 percent. While this is a fine stretch by Donald Trump to get to that 35 percent ceiling, which I think is a ceiling for him, anything outside of that, any kind of Republican primary where there’s a field of three or four or certainly a national election is a disaster for him.”

“Democrats keep talking about Donald Trump because we want him to—we like his primacy in this debate. we think it’s very good for the Democratic party and it’s killing the Republican Party. The Wall Street Journal did a poll on the favorability of the Republican Party. You know what the favorability of the Republican Party since the ascension of Donald Trump? Twenty nine percent—a disaster for Republicans in a general election.”

He added, “He’s not spending money on advertising because every time he says an outrageous comment about a woman, Hispanic, Muslims, any other segment, the media all report it for several days. It very much appeals to what I call this hate wing, which is a narrow slice of the electorate. It keeps him up in the polls but is very destructive to the Republican Party.”

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