While keeping in mind the old adage “It’s not the votes that count, but who counts the votes,” Democrats are absolutely freaking out about what a dumpster fire Joe Biden is heading into the 2024 election.
“A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.”
And while Democrats have spent 2024 on a “joyless and exhausting grind,” now, nearly five months away from the election, “anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation,” according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives who spoke with the outlet.
“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 one Democratic operative close to the White House, adding that Biden’s terrible polling “are creating the freakout.”
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’” the source added, dramatically.
The freakout comes as Trump leads in 5 key states, while young and nonwhite voters are shifting allegiances:
And while the White House isn’t yet facing reality, Democratic strategists are telling it like it is…
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.”