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There’s some fascinating reporting from CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere about the growing levels of angst Democrats are expressing about President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
Dovere refers to worried conversations among Democrats and donors that, contrary to all public evidence, Biden may not end up running for re-election.
“They feel that time is running out and that the lack of the more robust campaign activity they want to see is a sign that their heart isn’t really in it,” Dovere writes.
Here’s a longer excerpt:
In a race that many expect will likely come down to a few hundred thousand votes in a few states, doubters argue that every day without a busy schedule on the stump will show voters that Biden’s age is as big a concern as they believe is. Or that the president and the people around him aren’t taking the threat of losing to Donald Trump or another Republican seriously enough, and are preparing for election night next year to be a 2016 déjà vu.
“If Trump wins next November and everybody says, ‘How did that happen,’ one of the questions will be: What was the Biden campaign doing in the summer of 2023?” said a person who worked in a senior position on Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Read the full report.
On “Inside Politics” Thursday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Dovere to tell us how many people currently in Biden’s world privately agree with outside concerns.
“Within Biden’s world, the actual circle of people around the president, they don’t agree with that at all,” he said. “What they would say is, ‘How many times do we have to go through this?’ How many times do people have to doubt Joe Biden and say he can’t win an election? … And then at the end of the day, he won the primary, he won the nomination, he won the election in 2020.”
Dovere also quotes Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 running mate re-election campaign manager, who has been privately advising the Biden team.
At this point in this cycle, the Obama campaign was much more fully formed, according to Dovere, who writes of Biden’s re-election effort:
The Wilmington location that was discussed to be open by mid-July is not yet. There are currently no personnel on the ground in competitive states, and names of potential hires have only just begun to be collected for review by the president and top advisers.
The dozen or so full-time Biden-Harris 2024 workers are mostly camped out at the Democratic National Committee’s desks near Capitol Hill in Washington, with some complaining about delays in hiring staff and others still complaining of the time it took to do it. enter the payroll themselves. There is no campaign finance director yet.
Obama might have had more infrastructure in place, but that doesn’t mean his 2012 effort was without concerns. It’s hard to believe now, more than a decade later, but Obama’s 2012 primary trip, while a sure thing and a cakewalk, was also beset by frustrations.
For example, Gallup released a poll before the 2010 midterm elections suggesting that more than a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults would support his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, if she challenged him for the nomination. She obviously never did.
Obama was extremely weakened after that 2010 midterm, suffering what he called a “shellacking,” when Republicans claimed a much larger majority in the House than Republicans barely hold in the House today .
In the summer of 2011, although it was not publicly reported at the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders seriously considered challenging Obama, he said. later report from Dovere by the Atlantic Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stepped in to exorcise Sanders, and Messina told Dovere that the prospect of a Sanders challenge had the Obama campaign team “absolutely panicked.” .
At this point in Obama’s presidency, in the summer of 2011, his approval rating among all adults was 44%, almost tied with Biden’s. Gallup approval rating of 43% at the end of June.
Obama’s approval rating among Democrats at this point in his presidency was 79%, which is about the same as Biden’s approval rating among Democrats today: 82% in the poll from Gallup at the end of June. But Obama had slightly more support among Republicans, which may have something to do with the increasingly partisan national political environment.
A prisoner won 40% of the Democratic vote in the West Virginia primary in 2012. CNN’s Jake Tapper wrote about it for ABC News at the time and noted that Sen. Joe Manchin would not say who he voted for — Obama or inmate Keith Judd, according to a report.
In other red states, so does Obama he struggled in the primariesgetting less than 60% in the primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas.
These weren’t exactly close races, and the fact that Obama didn’t have a stronger showing is likely a reflection of who turns out to vote in an uncontested national Democratic primary when the real race that year was on the Republican side .
When the tide turned in 2020 and then-President Donald Trump faced some token challengers, Republicans simply canceled multiple primaries. South Carolina canceled its primary even though its former governor, Mark Sanford, was challenging Trump.
This year, it’s another former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, and a South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, who are running in the single digits in national primary polls.
For Biden, his biggest challenger so far is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign is fueled by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Yes, Kennedy is registering in the polls, more than 10% in many. But his out-of-the-ordinary views also mean he can’t get the support of his family members, let alone be seen as a viable alternative to Biden.
To get a sense of how far Kennedy is, read this analysis by CNN’s Harry Enten.
Certainly nothing as dangerous for Biden as when Senator Ted Kennedy tried to unseat then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980, undoubtedly hurting Carter before he was defeated by Ronald Reagan.
Nor is there anything like Pat Buchanan’s spirited primary challenge that hurt then-President George HW Bush’s chances in 1992. Nor is there a serious independent candidacy that could emerge in the general election, like Ross’s Perot of 92. Bush eventually lost the three-way race to Bill Clinton.
All of which suggests that while Democrats will continue to worry about Biden’s age, his campaign structure, his unique ability to trip over words and all the ways Republicans attack him, it’s a block to be your candidate except for unforeseen events.
