A growing number of nervous senior Democratic Party officials privately fear that Kamala Harris will lose the election, according to a new report.
The Democrat’s reported “bed-wetting” comes despite polls putting Harris and Trump neck-and-neck going into the final weeks of the campaign.
In its final poll with eleven days still to go until Election Day, the New York Times/Siena National Poll has the candidates deadlocked for the popular vote at 48-48.
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While Harris has lost a slight edge she held over Donald Trump in the previous poll, she has closed the gap on the economy and is more popular with undecided or persuadable voters.
But insiders tell Axios that some Democratic Party officials are already worrying that Harris has blown it.
They say that finger-pointing has already begun over whether Joe Biden is to blame for delaying his decision to quit the race too long or Harris for her failure to capitalize on her huge fund-raising advantage over Donald Trump.
One senior staffer is even said to have texted: “Going down?”
By contrast, says Axios, Republican Party officials are “shockingly confident” and already making plans for who does what in a Trump White House.
Dan Scavino, Trump’s adviser and “ghost tweeter” is already referring to the 45th president as “45-47.”
Democratic Party officials are said to be fretting over the truncated three-and-a-half month Harris campaign and the fact that America has never elected a woman president, let alone a Black woman.
But the biggest concern, say insiders, is that nothing Harris does or says seems to reignite her campaign after the heady honeymoon period following Biden’s decision to call it a day.
The party reportedly spent $1 billion over the last three months to boost the Harris campaign, which is nearly twice as much as the Republicans spent on Trump.
But Trump’s tribulations, including being called a “fascist” by his retired U.S. Marine General John Kelly, his former chief of staff, have done little to lighten the mood or move the needle.
The report is said to be based on “scores of conversations with people close to Harris and intimately involved in swing-state races, including officials inside her campaign and top Biden administration officials.”
The chief concern, say the unnamed sources, is that Harris has failed to carve out an identity for herself while making “too many different cases” against Trump.
While Trump can apparently do anything he wants, Harris is seen as being held to a different standard. CNN political commentator Van Jones is quoted as saying: “He gets to be lawless. She has to be flawless.”
One experienced Democratic strategist told Axios: “She is who she is. Let’s hope it’s enough.”
In an attempt to lighten the mood, Patrick Dillon, political strategist husband of Harris Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley, looked for the silver lining, referencing the Axios story on X, formerly known as Twitter, with the caption: “Could give me all the data in the world and nothing would make me surer of victory than this.”
Two battleground states, Nevada and Pennsylvania, are said to be keeping Democrats up at night, with concerns that both might be slipping from Harris’ grasp even though Biden won them in 2020.
