Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden
[I am one of those previously confident. We have spent tens if millions of dollars in the last month or so and have not moved the polls.]
… five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. …worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.
… Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,”…
[It’s the reason why he agreed to debates. It’s getting desperate.]
Despite everything, Trump is running ahead of Biden in most battleground states. He raised far more money in April…
The concern has metastasized in recent days as Trump jaunted to some of the country’s most liberal territories, including New Jersey and New York…
While he’s long lagged Biden in cash on hand, Trump’s fundraising outpaced the president’s by $25 million last month, and included a record-setting $50.5 million haul…
One adviser to major Democratic Party donors provided a running list that has been shared with funders of nearly two dozen reasons why Biden could lose…
“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.”
…
“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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In the swing state of Michigan, Democratic state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky suggested Biden’s standing is so tenuous that down-ballot Democrats can’t rely in November “on the top of the ticket to pull us along.”
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Whatever the Biden campaign has been doing over the past two months — and it’s a lot of activity, including $25 million in swing-state ad spending, according to AdImpact — it has had only a limited effect. According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s average job-approval rating on March 7, the date of his State of the Union Address, was 38.1 percent. As of Friday, it’s 38.4 percent.
And his standing against Trump has also changed little. On April 22, the day Trump’s criminal trial began, the presumptive GOP nominee held a 0.3-point lead in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump is up about a point since then, currently leading Biden by 1.4 points in the FiveThirtyEight average.
Trump, meanwhile, has already started his incursion into safe blue states. His campaign’s psychological warfare in New York, California and New Jersey — where House districts will determine control of Congress’ lower chamber — is spiking Democrats’ already-elevated blood pressure.
“New York Democrats need to wake up,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.
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Levine has been something of a Paul Revere in New York, sounding alarms two years ago when a Trump-aligned Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, appeared to be gaining on Kathy Hochul, the moderate Democratic incumbent. Hochul narrowly held him off.
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Biden’s weaker numbers bear that out. A Siena College poll released Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump in New York by only 9 points — 47 to 38 percent among registered voters. Four years ago, Biden won the state by 23 points.
To that end, Biden released TV and radio ads in the Empire State on Thursday…
Trump has railed against blue-state officials, starting with the justice system in New York. In California, he dispatched his daughter-in-law, Lara, and one of his sons, Eric…
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And as in New York, California Democrats are bracing for more incoming from Trump.
