
(Photo / Andrew Harnik)
Fundraising numbers show that Joe Biden’s last big advantage in the presidential race has completely fallen apart. With everything squarely aligned against him, Democrats are starting to panic. They now find themselves in the position they have long foretold of their opponents: the walls are, in fact, closing in.
Politico delivered a one-two punch to Biden World over the holiday weekend. First, a report on the candidates’ fundraising numbers “neutralized” the one big advantage Biden was counting on to beat back Donald Trump’s seemingly irrepressible momentum. Now, a report Tuesday morning revealed that Dems are in full “freakout” mode over Biden’s minuscule odds in November. But the picture is even worse than top Democrats would openly admit.
Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden https://t.co/vmOFLSfgYT
— POLITICO (@politico) May 28, 2024
Trump’s record-setting $50 million haul from one fundraiser in April doubled Biden’s score for the entire month. So much for the plan to bury Trump in a “massive avalanche” of campaign cash.
The Politico report has two possible explanations.
First, there was a lack of “big donor events” in April. Theoretically, this is a problem that can be rectified: rally America’s globalist elite — finance, pharma, tech bros and celebs — to churn out cash and save the status quo they all reap the rewards of. These are Democrats’ core constituents, after all, and they have plenty of money to burn when it comes to “saving democracy.”
But the second explanation does not have such an easy fix. “There is a question as to when the grassroots money really kicks in in a meaningful way,” one Biden campaign official anonymously told Politico. “It’s not organic yet in a way that it needs to be,” he added. Still, the campaign tried to keep up an optimistic front.
While it’s true the campaign has a robust outreach network, the enthusiasm for a doddering old president presiding over a bad economy just isn’t there. The most politically-motivated wing of the party — the identitarian, blue-haired activist class — is busy protesting Israel and plotting ways to disrupt the Democratic convention in August; they’re not going to donate to “Genocide Joe.” Meanwhile, average people are either too broke or too disinterested to chip in an extra five bucks.
If Democrats are counting on small-dollar donations to save the day, they shouldn’t hold their breath.
HAPPENING NOW in THE BRONX🔥
Patriots for Trump Rally🇺🇸
🎥 @NJEGmedia pic.twitter.com/USSiu1EQmb
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) May 18, 2024
Biden’s fundraising woes are just the cherry on top of on Democratic advisor’s “running list” of two dozen reasons Biden could lose in November. The reasons range from immigration and inflation to Biden’s age and the looming threat of third party candidates. Meanwhile, “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.
This is what’s leading to the aforementioned “freakout” among more than a dozen Democratic leaders and operatives Politico spoke with. Biden’s poll numbers have been lagging for a long time. Trump has been ahead in the RealClear polling average since last October, enjoys a lead in most swing states most of the time, and Biden’s small bump in the month after his State of the Union address has already evaporated. Trump is cutting into Democrats’ core constituencies — black, Hispanic, and young voters — who conventional wisdom said for decades were unwinnable for the GOP. Even the ongoing Bragg trial has not paid the dividends Democrats were all not-so-quietly hoping for.
Trump seems so confident in his polling swing that he’s even making incursions into enemy territory. He held major rallies in New York and New Jersey throughout May, while Eric Trump turned out for a fundraiser in Southern California last week. After Lee Zeldin wildly overperformed in New York’s gubernatorial race against Gov. Kathy Hochul, even this deep blue state cannot be ruled out entirely. Partly thanks to the exodus of people from New York City, a new Sienna poll puts Trump only nine points behind in a state he lost by 23 points in the last election.
With Democrats now fully believing their own propaganda, the anxiety that’s been percolating for months has broken out into a panic.
“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president,’” one strategist with ties to the White House told Politico. “It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’”
“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” said Pete Giangreco, a veteran Democratic campaign strategist.
“If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” he added.
So rallying big dollar donors may not be as easy as it first seems. Sure, America’s oligarchical class hates Trump; they’d much prefer to collect the perks of Biden’s creeping globalist nanny state. But these people did not become wealthy enough to throw millions at a campaign by playing fast and loose with their investments. And Biden increasingly looks like a losing horse.