President Joe Biden’s floundering reelection campaign has plunged some Democratic officials and strategists into full-blown panic mode, Politico reported on Tuesday.
"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," a Democratic operative with close ties to the White House told Politico on the condition of anonymity.
The operative stressed the high stakes of Biden’s rematch this fall with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. "This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end,’" he said.
The remarks come as recent polls have indicated Biden’s reelection bid is in dire straits. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll last week showed Trump is ahead of Biden by 6 points nationally, while a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll on Wednesday and a New York Times poll earlier this month both found Trump leading the Democratic incumbent in five anticipated swing states.
The Politico report also noted that an adviser to major Democratic Party donors had shared with nearly two dozen funders a long list of reasons Biden could lose, including concerns about inflation, Biden’s age, his record on immigration, the unpopularity of Vice President Kamala Harris, and the potential impact of third-party candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone," the adviser said.
Another Democratic strategist, Pete Giangreco, told Politico it's difficult to make the case to voters that Biden deserves reelection.
"There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now," Giangreco said of the Biden campaign. "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."
Fundraising is another major concern for Biden, as Trump outpaced him by $25 million last month. Massachusetts governor Maura Healey (D.) last week urged donors to give more as she introduced the president at a fundraising event.
"To those of you who opened up your wallets, thank you," Healey said. "We’d like you to open them up a little bit more and to find more patriots—more patriots who believe in this country, who recognize and understand the challenge presented at this time."
Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz, however, slammed Trump for his "photo-ops and PR stunts" and said the former president would not be able to "win over the voters that will decide this election."