Top Democratic advisers are sounding the alarm about voter enthusiasm ahead of this year's midterm elections, Politico reported Thursday, as Republicans enjoy their widest polling margins since 2010.
The most recent NBC poll found an enormous, 17-point Republican advantage in enthusiasm, which is only one part of a "trend line that is especially grim" for Democrats.
"It's beginning to look like nothing is going to bail the party out this year," Politico reporter David Siders wrote, noting that "the last time the enthusiasm gap was this wide, in 2010, Democrats lost more than 60 seats in the House."
Even Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod admitted that "the atmosphere clearly is not promising for Democrats to buck historical trends."
Not only are Democrats "saddled" with President Joe Biden's "weak job approval numbers" and falling behind Republicans on the generic ballot, Siders observed, but now they're also "confronting a super-charged Republican electorate." About two-thirds of Republicans say they're highly interested in participating in the midterms, according to the poll, compared with just half of Democrats. Even Biden's infrastructure package and Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson haven't boosted Democrats' prospects.
"We've got to stop fooling ourselves here," said Julie Roginsky, a former top adviser to Democratic New Jersey governor Phil Murphy.
Some top Democrats, however, don't seem to be heeding Roginsky's advice.
"We are in the strongest position we've been in in months," Biden, whose polling average sits at historic lows, told the Democratic National Committee this month.