"A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects," begins a Politico article about the Democrat's "freakout" over Biden's listless campaign for reelection.
“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad, or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House.
The "operative' was granted anonymity to talk to Politico, but you have to wonder just how bad things have gotten. If mid-level politicos are jumping ship five months from election day, the situation has to be critical.
What makes this panic attack by Democrats so unreal is their belief that Donald Trump has fooled everyone but a few brave, courageous Democrats, and they're the only ones who can see "the end of democracy" if Trump is elected. “This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’”
Pathetic, really. How little faith they have in America.
This is ultimately a case of Democrats "freaking out" over Democrats losing power, not over Trump winning. Has Trump somehow hypnotized all of his donors and his tens of millions of supporters so they just can't see that he is a "threat to democracy"?
The Biden advisor who is facing the reality of the situation doesn't quite know what to say to Biden's donors. “Donors ask me on an hourly basis about what I think,” the adviser said, calling it “so much easier to show them, so while they read it, I can pour a drink.”
The adviser added, “The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone.”
But Democratic critics of the campaign’s approach — while agreeing that abortion should be a winning issue — said they’re challenged when pressed by friends to make the case for why Biden will win.
“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”
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Michigan state politician Rep. Laurie Pohutsky says that down-ballot candidates in her state can't rely on Biden to pull them along.
“In 2020, there was enough energy to get Donald Trump out and there were other things on the ballot that brought young people out in subsequent elections," she said.
“That’s not the case this time," said Pohutsky. "I worry that because we’ve had four years with a stable White House, particularly young voters don’t feel that sense of urgency and might not remember how disastrous 2017 was right after the Trump administration took over.”
Ultimately, one of the biggest obstacles to a Biden victory is the perception that the Trump presidency was superior to that of Biden. As long as that perception holds, Biden doesn't have a prayer, no matter how many "warnings" about Trump "destroying democracy" they give.
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