In the past months, Democrats across the nation have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at former President Donald Trump in an attempt to derail his campaign for a second term in the White House.
Between Democratic district attorneys in Georgia and New York and vengeful Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, the Republican presidential candidate was hit with dozens of felony charges and a civil fraud lawsuit.
Trump even joked about it during a rally this month in New Jersey, saying, “If my plane flies over a blue state, the following day I get subpoenaed to go before a grand jury.”
“If my plane flies over a blue state, the following day I get subpoenaed.”
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 11, 2024
But despite all the efforts of the left to pull his support away from him, the former president’s star seems to just keep rising — and it’s causing panic among his opponents.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that the Democratic Party is in a full-blown “freakout” over President Joe Biden’s chances of winning re-election this fall.
Despite previously expressing confidence, many high-level Democrats now harbor serious doubts about Biden’s prospects against Trump, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives.
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s, ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end,’” one Democratic operative close to the White House told Politico.
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The president’s stubbornly low poll numbers and the high stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” the source said.
But at the same time, no one wants to be the one to bell the cat and say the quiet part out loud: Biden is in big trouble this fall.
“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,” another Democratic operative told Politico.
Trump is leading Biden in most battleground state polls and raked in a record $50.5 million from a single fundraising event last month.
An adviser tracking reasons why the president could lose has compiled a list with nearly two dozen factors, from immigration and inflation to the president’s age and Vice President Kamala Harris‘ unpopularity.
“The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone,” the adviser told Politico.
While the Biden team projects confidence publicly, criticizing Trump’s “photo-ops and PR stunts,” some Democrats worry their candidate’s campaign is not embarking on a winning path.
Biden’s approval rating has barely budged in months, hovering around 38 percent.
Meanwhile, Trump has launched an aggressive offensive even in Democratic bastions such as New York, California and New Jersey. He aims to make inroads with Hispanic and black voters, which is sowing anxiety among Democrats unused to facing a credible GOP threat in those demographics.
A Siena College poll released Wednesday found that Trump was behind Biden in deep-blue New York by only 9 points, 47 percent to 38 percent.
“The number of people in New York, including people of color that I come across who are saying positive things about Trump, is alarming,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said, according to Politico.
According to The Washington Post, new polling also shows that the Republican Party has caught up to the Democratic Party in terms of how many registered voters identify with each party.
This is a big shift from past years when more voters considered themselves Democrats.
According to polling from NBC News and the Pew Research Center, around 41 percent of registered voters now identify as Republicans compared with 40 percent who identify as Democrats. Back in 2016, Democrats had a 7-point advantage over Republicans in party affiliation, according to the Post.
Veteran Republican pollster Bill McInturff called this new parity a potential “game changer” for this fall’s election.
This is the under recognized game changer for 2024. Republicans competing on a level playing field https://t.co/KrqM9iyv3m
— Bill McInturff (@pollsterguy) May 21, 2024
It could be the first time in 20 years that a Republican wins the popular vote, according to a March article in Newsweek.
This is not to say the GOP has the election in the bag.
A lot can happen over the final few months, and you can be sure there are strategy meetings taking place in Democratic offices all over the nation about what other roadblocks they can put up to slow the Trump train.
As the former president said last year in California when speaking about the weaponization of the justice system, “If you looked at Al Capone in the wrong way, he’d kill you, [but] he was not indicted like me.”
“Al Capone was not indicted so much”: President Trump mocks “weaponized” charges pic.twitter.com/KylwP15lBB
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) September 29, 2023
Unfortunately for the Democrats, the Trump train has turned out to be more like a Trump tank, continuing to move forward despite everything in its way.
If the former president can sustain this realignment and continue making inroads with critical voter blocs like Hispanics, even Democrats have to fearfully admit, he will be president in 2025.
