Joe Biden is bullish on his chances against Donald Trump in November — both in public and in private.
But the mood among top Democratic operatives is decidedly different.
“... Anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects,” reads a new report from POLITICO:
“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,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely.
But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said.
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’”
It’s a stark contrast from what Biden recently told donors.
“While the press doesn’t write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor, with the polls moving towards us and away from Trump,” Biden said according to Axios.
A poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last month found that more than half of U.S. adults think Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living and immigration, while nearly half thought Donald Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change.
Americans rated Biden particularly negatively on a few specific issues. Only about 2 in 10 Americans thought Biden’s presidency helped “a lot” or “a little” on cost of living, and 16% said that about immigration and border security. Nearly 6 in 10 said his presidency hurt a lot or a little on these issues. Nearly half, 46%, of Americans, by contrast, said that Trump’s presidency helped a lot or a little on immigration or border security. Four in 10 say it helped on cost of living.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
