Democratic insiders are becoming more and more concerned about President Joe Biden’s polling and some of them now worry that his loss may lead to the end of American democracy.
A Democratic operative told Politico, “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.”
But he added that Mr Biden’s consistently bad numbers and the high stakes of the election have led to a full-on “freakout”.
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end’,” he told the outlet.
Strategists and elected Democratic officials who previously were bullish about Mr Biden’s prospects are now increasingly concerned and the gulf between what they will say on and off the record is only widening.
Former President Donald Trump, who could face a verdict as soon as this week in his hush money trial, leads Mr Biden in most of the swing states that will decide the election.
Meanwhile, a trial against Hunter Biden is set to begin in Delaware.
Last month, the Trump campaign outraised the Biden campaign for the first time. Even as the Biden team has more cash on hand, Mr Trump beat Mr Biden in the money game by $25m in April, buoyed by the record-breaking fundraiser in Palm Beach at the home of a Trump-friendly investor.
An adviser to Democratic donors told Politico that they have a list for funders with close to two dozen reasons why Mr Biden may lose – such as immigration, inflation, Mr Biden’s age, the approval numbers of Vice President Kamala Harris, and popular third-party options such as conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The adviser told the outlet that while donors read the list, “I can pour a drink.”
“The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone,” the adviser told Politico.
Mr Biden’s campaign aides note that there are some positive polls and that Mr Trump, stuck in court, has not been able to campaign as hard as the president. They also point to the Trump campaign’s poor campaign infrastructure in key states, including a lack of staff and advertising.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign told Politico that, “The work we do every day on the ground and on the airwaves in our battleground states — to talk about how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that’s keeping prices high, and highlight Donald Trump’s anti-American campaign for revenge and retribution and abortion bans — is the work that will again secure us the White House.”
Several Democrats mentioned abortion as a key issue for many voters that Democrats may be able to win over.
Democratic strategist Pete Giangreco told the outlet that if the race is about what was better, Mr Biden’s term in the White House or Mr Trump’s, “we lose that every day of the week.”
Democratic Michigan state Representative Laurie Pohutsky added: “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.”
