With just over five months until re-election against President Donald Trump, President Biden’s consistently low approval ratings are causing panic among Democratic activists.
The outlook is very dire, Politico reported Tuesday.One donor adviser to the major political parties is reportedly circulating a list of nearly 20 reasons why the incumbent president is in trouble, including age, dissatisfaction with immigration and inflation, and the unpopularity of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Donors are asking me every hour what I think.” The adviser told the media.“It’s much easier to show kids, so you can pour them a drink while they read,” she added.
“The list of reasons we can ‘win’ is so short that I don’t even need to keep it on my phone,” the person continued.
“We don’t want to be the ones publicly saying that we’re hopeless, or that the campaign is terrible, or that Biden is making mistakes. No one wants to be that person,” a Democratic source with close ties to the White House told Politico, explaining why the president’s aides have appeared unfazed by the situation while privately expressing dismay about the importance of the election.
“This isn’t about, ‘Oh my goodness, Mitt Romney might become president,'” the operative added. “This is about, ‘Oh my goodness, democracy might end.'”
Not only are polls showing the 77-year-old Trump leading the 81-year-old Biden in battleground states that will determine the outcome of the presidential election, but the 45th president is also catching up in the money race.
In April, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee raised $25 million more than the Biden campaign and the Democrats, including a record $50.5 million raised at their event in Palm Beach on April 6.
The funding shortfall prompted an urgent plea from Massachusetts’ Democratic governor, Maura Healey, during Biden’s fundraising visit to Boston last week.
“Thank you to everyone who opened their wallets and donated,” Healey told donors. “We want you to open your wallets a little more and find more patriots, patriots who believe in this country and who recognize and understand the challenges we face during this time.”
The Republican front-runner also hasn’t shied away from courting traditional Democratic voters, including black and Hispanic voters, at a rally in the South Bronx last week.
“New York Democrats need to wake up,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said. “The New Yorkers I know are astonishingly high in the number of people, including people of color, who have positive things to say about Trump.”
“I’m worried we’re going to have a situation like 2022 where we all have to wake up and panic in the last seven weeks.”
“The election is more competitive than it should be, given how awful Donald Trump has been,” acknowledged Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-New York, a South Bronx Democrat. “In a properly functioning democracy, there should be no path for Donald Trump to become president. The fact that it’s a competitive race is concerning.”
The Biden campaign has dismissed the former president’s recent outings in New York and New Jersey as a “photo shoot and publicity stunt.”
“The work we’re doing every day on the ground in battleground states and on the airwaves – telling the story of how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that is driving up prices, and highlighting President Donald Trump’s retaliation, revenge and anti-American campaign to ban abortion – is the work we’re doing to secure the White House again,” spokesman Kevin Munoz told Politico.
“We have to run a campaign that is honest about the message that Donald Trump is taking us back to the 19th century and Biden is taking us even further back into the 21st century,” agreed Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), but declined to say whether he thought the presidential campaign was making that point sufficiently.
“There’s still a path to victory, but their campaign doesn’t seem to be on that path at this point,” dissenting Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist.
“If the framework of this campaign is, ‘Would you rather have three and a half years of Biden or four years of Trump?’ we lose that framework every day, and twice on Sunday,” he added.
“There was enough energy in 2020 to oust Donald Trump and then there was another agenda to attract young people in the election after that,” suggested Democratic Rep. Laurie Pohutsky of Michigan.
“That’s not the case this time. After four years of stability in the White House, I worry that younger voters in particular don’t feel a sense of urgency and don’t remember how terrible 2017 was right after the Trump administration took office.”
Republican National Committee member Harmeet Dhillon of California supported Pohutsky’s diagnosis and said no Democrat would support the commander in chief, who is in his 80s.
“The most diplomatic thing I hear from Democrats is, ‘My God, the president has this option?'” she told Politico.
