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\n 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.\n <\/p>\n \n Dovere refers to worried conversations among Democrats and donors that, contrary to all public evidence, Biden may not end up running for re-election.\n <\/p>\n \n “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.\n <\/p>\n \n Here’s a longer excerpt:\n <\/p>\n \n 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 d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\n <\/p>\n \n “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.\n <\/p>\n \n Read the full report.\n <\/p>\n \n 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.\n <\/p>\n \n “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? \u2026 And then at the end of the day, he won the primary, he won the nomination, he won the election in 2020.”\n <\/p>\n \n Dovere also quotes Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 running mate <\/strong>re-election campaign manager, who has been privately advising the Biden team.\n <\/p>\n \n At this point in this cycle, the Obama campaign was much more fully formed, according to Dovere, who writes <\/strong>of Biden’s re-election effort:\n <\/p>\n \n 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.\n <\/p>\n \n 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.\n <\/p>\n \n 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.\n <\/p>\n \n For example, Gallup released a poll<\/a> before the 2010 midterm elections <\/strong>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.\n <\/p>\n \n 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 .\n <\/p>\n \n 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<\/a> 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.” .\n <\/p>\n \n 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<\/a> of 43% at the end of June.\n <\/p>\n \n 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 <\/strong>Obama had slightly more support among Republicans, which may have something to do with the increasingly partisan national political environment.\n <\/p>\n \n A prisoner won 40% of the Democratic vote in the West Virginia primary in 2012. CNN’s Jake Tapper wrote about it<\/a> for ABC News at the time and noted that Sen. Joe Manchin would not say who he voted for \u2014 Obama or inmate Keith Judd, according to a report.\n <\/p>\n \n
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