The question of how — and when — to engage with Mr. Trump’s political broadsides has become a dividing line among Democrats and party activists.
The first reaction came Friday evening, from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
President Trump had escalated his political attacks on Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat who is also one of the first Muslim women to serve in Congress, tweeting an inflammatory video that implied she trivialized the horror of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Ninety minutes later, Mr. Sanders called the video “disgusting and dangerous,” and an example of “Trump’s racism and hate.”
It kicked off a cascade of analogous statements from other Democrats who are running for president, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and former Representative Beto O’Rourke, all of whom weighed in shortly afterward.
Not on that list: Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, who waited until later in the weekend to offer statements of support.
It did not go unnoticed.
“Black folks are watching. Muslim folks are watching. Brown folks are watching,’’ said Jennifer Epps-Addison, the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal organizing group focusing on minority communities. “And we’re making our decisions about who to support in real time. When your sister is being attacked, you can’t wait to get the politics right.”
For candidates competing in a wide open presidential primary, the question of how — and when — to engage with Mr. Trump’s political broadsides has become a dividing line among Democrats and party activists.
Just as some advocacy groups are looking to make certain policies litmus tests for a candidate’s progressive credentials, such as “Medicare for all” and the Green New Deal, others are monitoring how quickly and forcefully each responds to Mr. Trump’s most inflammatory moments — whether he’s using images from the nation’s darkest days to attack Ms. Omar or suggesting that authorities should release detained migrants in Democratic cities, as he also did in recent days.
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Mr. Trump’s actions do not divide Democrats on the merits, as nothing unites all corners of the party more than the desire to oust him from the White House. His effect on the primary is more political; for voters and activists outraged by Mr. Trump’s actions and rhetoric, only a quick and unequivocal response is satisfactory.
Mr. Trump set off the controversy when he targeted Ms. Omar on Friday with a video of the World Trade Center burning and other images from the attacks, playing to suggestions from conservatives that she had minimized the horrors of that day in a speech she gave last month.
