Laurel Duggan
Democratic strategists are concerned that former President Donald Trump will beat President Joe Biden in the 2024 election if he wins the GOP primary, according to The Hill.
Biden’s team is operating under the assumption that it can rely on anti-Trump sentiment to win in the upcoming election, but Democratic strategists quoted anonymously by The Hill are worried this strategy will be insufficient.
“Be very f—ing worried,” one strategist told the outlet.
“There is a concern from a lot of people like me, for sure,” another Democratic strategist told The Hill. “There’s a disconnect between the consultant class of our party and the voters. They think they can just run a bunch of ads talking about how crazy Donald Trump is [and] that will be enough. That’s just not the case.”
Other Democratic strategists have expressed concerns that the Biden campaign is off to a slow start; two weeks after Biden announced his candidacy, his campaign manager not yet starting her job, the campaign’s seven co-chairs have not yet met up and the media is focusing heavily on the Republican primary race, according to The New York Times. Biden’s advisors told the outlet the campaign so far has been intentionally low-key in order to save money, and that senior staffers are still focused on work inside the White House.
“Part of me is troubled that people are more enthusiastic about doing the often unglamorous work of government policymaking when there’s an extremely important political campaign that is staring us in the face,” said John Del Cecato, a strategist on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. “I don’t know if that speaks to a belief that this will be a joyless campaign re-election effort or if it’s something else.”
“It would be unfortunate if they let the Republican nominee govern the conversation on a day-to-day basis,” Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, told the NYT. “It feels like too much of a wild card to sit back. You’ve got to figure out a way to excite and energize people about your own conversation and to drive Donald Trump into that one.”
Other strategists were confident that drawing on public distaste for Trump would catapult Biden to victory.
“You’ve now had three consecutive elections where Democrats’ performance has been at the upper end of what’s been possible for us,” veteran political strategist Simon Rosenberg told The Hill. “Anyone who thinks that this anti-MAGA majority that did so well for us these last three elections is all of a sudden going to not show up, well, I have a red wave to sell you.”
The White House did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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