Member Newsletter
Yesterday I opened my inbox to an Axios email with the subject line: “Dems Fear Biden Loss.” Needless to say, versions of this story have become almost a stock piece of the 2024 campaign. And, look, I fear a Biden loss as well. He could totally lose and that would be really, really bad. But I got the sense that the import of this item was a bit more totalizing than that. And well … I was right. The item presents a picture of a campaign cocooned from outside input, intolerant of dissenters who aren’t confident of a win and largely the work of Biden and top advisor Mike Donilon, who is portrayed as having a strategy that is little more than a preciously naive hope that in the end voters will “do the right thing.”
But the heart of the piece comes at the top with a quote (emphasis added) from someone described as a “Democratic strategist in touch with the campaign.”
“It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary.”