The president’s campaign staff must be going through bourbon and Xanax like it’s nobody’s business. They struck the iceberg, all the compartments were filling with water, and the captain—Biden—thought they could still successfully finish the trip. This campaign is politically dead, and the aides already know this. Some knew it the night Biden got boat raced by Trump in the debate. During a staff call, campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon did her best to pump up the troops, but it’s hard to do when the theme was “Biden feels like s**t” because he has COVID and 'don’t watch the news anymore' (via Axios) [emphasis mine]:
The call is the latest example of Biden campaign leadership working to turn around the low morale among staffers in the aftermath of Biden's debate.
"Don't watch cable news all the time," chair Jen O'Malley Dillon told staff at the campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
"That is not the real world. The real world is the voters that are standing with us, the delegates that are with us, and we're going to weather this because of this organization."
What they're saying: O'Malley Dillon reiterated to staff that Biden is "in this race" and "in it to win it."
"I talked to him this morning – he sounds like sh*t because he's not feeling that well," she said, noting his recent COVID diagnosis.
"But he is doing the work, and he is focused on what you guys are doing."
O'Malley Dillon added that "the people that the president is hearing from are saying: 'stay in this race and keep going and keep fighting, and we need you.'
"Those voices will never be as loud as the people on TV, but remember that the people in our country are not watching cable news. They just aren't."
Translation: the polls aren’t looking good. https://t.co/ZdFdbVrGa3
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) July 19, 2024
So, essentially, the staff should be like Biden, hide in a bunker, and ignore news they don’t like, which is precisely how the president ended up in this crisis. Sixty-five percent of Democrats now want Biden to drop out. Also, no one is watching cable news? Was she being serious? Because that’s facially untrue? Yet, that soundbite is all you need to know regarding the state of the Biden campaign—they’re in serious trouble.
It’s amazing what’s transpired in a few months. The Biden campaign probably thought they were in prime position to win. As Republicans had made him their presumptive nominee earlier this winter, he was dealing with legal woes that they thought would damage his candidacy. Wrong. While Trump’s popularity isn’t the best, though I think he’s low-balled in surveys, Biden’s presidency has collapsed. The bottom fell out when the president got steamrolled by Trump in the June 27 debate, which set off the meltdown with the Democrats right now.
Meanwhile, Trump has had most of his legal cases delayed indefinitely or tossed out. Biden’s popularity rests at 32 percent; he’s trailing Trump in most key battleground states—he’s not leading in any of them. And his fundraising is starting to dry up. As the Republicans were concluding their convention this week, the heavyweights of the party, including Nancy Pelosi, took the gloves off and started putting the screws to the president to exit the race out of fear he was dragging the party down. Biden refuses to listen, so everyone and their mother are now leaking details of their meetings with the president.
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