Democratic debates creating potential negative ads for Trump

Democrats launched several attacks against each other during last week's Las Vegas debate that might have given President Donald Trump's re-election campaign and outside groups fodder for negative political ads come the fall.

Attack lines during primary debates in past election cycles have famously provided content for the opposing party in the general election. 

In an April 1988 Democratic presidential primary debate, then-Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.) criticized then-Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-Mass.) for his weekend state furlough program, describing it as "weekend passes for convicted criminals." 

The National Security PAC created a controversial ad during the general election in support of George H. W. Bush’s campaign that focused on African-American convict Willie Horton, who raped a woman and stabbed her fiancé after he was freed under the Massachusetts state furlough program.

Democrats decried the ad as a "racist dog whistle," but Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater notoriously vowed he would make "Willie Horton [Dukakis'] running mate," and the ad helped Bush climb back from a 17-point deficit in the polls to win the presidency.

In the debate on Wednesday evening, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg slammed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as unelectable, pointing to his support of “Medicare for All,” which would end the private health insurance system.

“I don't think there's any chance of the senator beating President Trump,” Bloomberg said. "You don't start out by saying I've got 160 million people, I'm going to take away the insurance plan that they love. That's just not a way that you go and start building the coalition that the Sanders camp thinks that they can do.”

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also criticized Sanders’ single-payer health care plan.

“I’m actually less concerned about the lack of transparency on Sanders' personal health,” said Buttigieg, "than I am about the lack of transparency on how to pay for his health care plan, since he's said that it's impossible to even know how much it's going to cost, and even after raising taxes on everybody making $29,000, there is still a multi-trillion-dollar hole."

“As a matter of fact,” he added, "if you add up all his policies altogether, they come to $50 trillion. He's only explained $25 trillion worth of revenue, which means that the hole in there is bigger than the size of the entire economy of the United States."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) argued that Democrats would lose the White House with Bloomberg as the nominee.

“Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk,” she said.

Sanders defended tweeting that billionaires should not exist and condemned Bloomberg’s wealth as "wrong" and "immoral" in a nation with "a half a million people sleeping out on the street, where we have kids who cannot afford to go to college, when we have 45 million people dealing with student debt." 

“We’re not going to throw out capitalism," countered Bloomberg. "Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn't work.”

Sanders called Bloomberg’s communism attack line a “cheap shot.”

Bloomberg returned the compliment, taunting Sanders as a hypocrite. “What a wonderful country we have," he said. "The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What did I miss here?”

GOP political consultant and TV ad maker John Brabender shared his analysis of the attacks between Democrats in the last debate.

"Two things struck me about that debate. If one of them on stage becomes the nominee, somebody will make a campaign ad against that person using what was said on stage, like they did to Trump," said Brabender, a long-time campaign adviser to former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) who created a TV campaign in the late 1990s that helped NHL star Mario Lemieux save his Pittsburgh Penguins from bankruptcy.

“The other thing," he added, "is that Republicans and Democrats alike are saying Bernie Sanders shouldn’t be president. Expect that ad."