Top Democrats have doubts about President Biden’s re-election strategy but won’t speak up over fears they will be exiled from the commander in chief’s inner circle, according to a report.
“It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it,” a Democratic strategist in contact with the Biden campaign told Axios Wednesday.
“That is scary,” the person added.
“Even for those close to the center, there is a hesitance to raise skepticism or doubt about the current path, for fear of being viewed as disloyal,” another person in the 81-year-old president’s orbit told the outlet, noting that there is no talk at the moment “that a change of course” for the campaign “is needed.”
At issue is a concern among senior Democrats that the Biden campaign is too focused on messaging related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, political violence, threats to democracy and former President Donald Trump’s character at the expense of addressing voter concerns with the economy and inflation.
In Biden’s most recent campaign remarks, at a fundraiser in McLean, Va. on Tuesday, the president mentioned “Trump” 17 times, “freedom” eight times and “democracy” four times, whereas the “economy” was only mentioned twice and “inflation” was brought up three times.
On Monday, the Biden campaign launched a $50 million television ad blitz hitting Trump over his 34-count felony business fraud conviction.
The ad attacks the 78-year-old GOP presidential candidate as “a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself.”
Mike Donilon, a longtime Biden aide and the campaign’s chief strategist, believes polls aren’t fully capturing the depth of voter concern about the threat to democracy he maintains that Trump poses.
“[T[he focus will become overwhelming on democracy” by November, Donilon said in an interview with The New Yorker earlier this year.
“I think the biggest images in people’s minds are going to be of January 6th,” the top Biden campaign official argued.
Biiden’s closest advisers, including Donilon, are convinced that the president defeated Trump in 2020 because voters resonated with the campaign’s “soul of the nation” messaging, an approach, Donilon claims, Democratic pollsters warned at the time was “nutty.”
Many Democrats, including some Biden administration officials, fear the campaign “learned the wrong lessons” from 2020 and Democratic wins in the 2022 midterm elections, and that its view of those successes are “distorted,” according to Axios.
“Biden didn’t win, Trump lost,” a person close to the White House told the outlet.
The Biden campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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