Political advisors close to President Joe Biden are allegedly having a “freakout” over his dismal re-election odds against former President Donald Trump, according to a new report.
A Politico report published Tuesday detailed panic within the Democratic Party ranks, with one operative close to the White House saying the outlook on the election was “creating the freakout.”
“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,” the anonymous operative told Politico. “Nobody wants to be that guy.”
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end,’” he continued.
One advisor to Democratic Party donors said he has nearly two dozen reasons Biden might lose, such as the illegal immigration crisis, inflation, and the president’s age (81). The advisor said explaining the election outlook to donors was “so much easier to show them, so while they read it, 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,” he added.
Trump leads by one percentage point in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of national polling data. However, Biden’s more concerning trend comes in the battleground states, which are likely to determine the election. Trump leads Biden in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, according to a poll from earlier this month, previously reported on by The Dallas Express. Each swing state went to Biden in 2020.
Still, Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, expressed optimism for the president’s re-election prospects.
“Trump’s photo-ops and PR stunts may get under the skin of some very serious D.C. people as compelling campaigning, but they will do nothing to win over the voters that will decide this election,” Munoz told Politico.
“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,” he continued.
Munoz did not respond to a request for comment on the pessimism expressed by some Democratic advisors.
Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist, said the Biden campaign has plenty of work to do to ensure victory.
“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” he told Politico. “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.”