Democratic insiders are plagued by a nagging case of political PTSD as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden carries a lead into the final two weeks of a hard-fought White House campaign, confident in their party’s nominee but afraid to count President Trump out after the unlikely comeback he pulled off four years ago.
Logically, Democrats look at Biden’s position relative to Trump and are heartened. The former vice president leads the incumbent by 8.6 percentage points nationally. He tops Trump in key Rust Belt battlegrounds, is on offense in traditionally red Arizona and Georgia, and threatens in Iowa and Ohio — states the president won big in 2016. Compared to Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Biden is overperforming with key voting blocs that could decide the election.
But Democrats have been here before. Four years ago, Trump erased Clinton’s significant leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the final 10 days of the campaign and won a dogfight in Florida to score a sizable Electoral College victory.
Democratic strategists believe the polling data. But “scarred by 2016,” as one otherwise optimistic party insider put it, Democrats are bracing for the possibility that the race could tighten, either naturally or because of surprise developments.
“Every Democrat working in politics was traumatized by 2016,” said Meredith Kelly, a communications operative who worked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018, when Democrats captured the House majority. “But Trump’s win also taught us lessons on messaging, polling strategies, and smarter places and ways to spend our money.”
Beyond making strategic adjustments, the Democrats’ cautious confidence rests on two assumptions: Biden is a stronger candidate than Clinton, and Trump’s antics, an advantage as a challenger four years ago, have worn thin with voters as an incumbent leading amid the coronavirus crisis. Democrats also feel better about the broader political environment than they did in 2016.
In 2016, Republicans were running strong down the ballot and improving their position as Election Day neared. This year, 14 days from the election and with heavy early and absentee voting, the polling for GOP congressional candidates is precarious. Republican insiders are worried about losing the Senate majority and shedding more House seats. Some Democrats say that, try as they might, they cannot find any serious obstacles between Biden and victory over Trump.
Yet the overriding emotion among many Democratic strategists is “dread.”
“We are indeed climbing the walls right now,” a Democratic operative said. “Sure, the odds are good. But you won’t convince us to focus on the odds instead of the threat of doom.”
However, there are reasons for Democrats to be jittery.
Despite Biden’s 8.6-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, his advantage over Trump in critical battleground states has tightened to 3.9 points. Meanwhile, Democratic strategists concede that they cannot rule out Trump drawing more white people without a college degree to the polls than he did in 2016. They also remain concerned about both the president’s voter turnout operation and their party’s shrinking voter registration edge over the GOP in states such as Florida and Pennsylvania.
Mail-in ballots also are causes for worry. Democrats are voting overwhelmingly via mail-in ballots to avoid the risk of becoming infected by the coronavirus when voting in person. If large numbers of mail-in ballots are thrown out due to technicalities or because they were filled out improperly, that could affect Biden’s vote total. Trump constantly casts aspersions on mail-in ballots, and most Republican voters are expected to vote in person on Election Day.
Those are “things that cause me to sleep with one eye open at night,” said T.J. Rooney, the former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. He, like other Democrats, is otherwise optimistic about Biden’s chances.
Some Democrats are more bullish on a Biden victory, pondering only how big of a rebuke Trump is poised to suffer on Nov. 3. On Friday, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos, a blog website popular with grassroots liberals, penned a lengthy post explaining why Biden was in great shape.
“The lesson here? We’re winning,” Moulitsas wrote. “We’re winning big enough that we can actually accomplish systemic political change. That’s awesome. It’s motivating. Let’s get it done!”
