Nervous Obama to Biden: You’re Blowing This and Trump Can Win

State polls are more important than national polls. There, too, Biden is losing. In the battleground states, Trump is up 3.6%. He is at 48.4% and Biden is at 44.8%. That is the real kicker. It is so alarming to the Democrats that they have realized that a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a real threat to Biden’s victory. He can take just enough votes away from Biden in battleground states to hand Trump a victory in November. 

Biden’s campaign is winning the money battle. It is flush with cash, while Trump’s fundraising is not so strong. Much of Trump’s fundraising goes to his legal bills. On the upside, Trump is usually outspent by his opponents and yet he wins anyway. In 2020, it wasn’t a money problem as it had to do with the pandemic. Trump was cruising to re-election up until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. 

Democrats are organizing a special group of Biden supporters to work against Kennedy and other challengers to Biden. The group will be well-funded and aggressive. 

TIME reports that Barack Obama has had two private visits with Biden, over lunches, where he has told Biden that changes have to be made to his campaign or Trump will win. Last June, Obama warned Biden that defeating Trump would be harder in 2024. The country is in a Carteresque malaise. Voters are not feeling all the wonderful successes Biden boasts about on the campaign trail. The truth is that 60% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck. No one but the most loyal Biden supporters believe his happy talk about the economy. 

Obama advised Biden to move more aggressively to make the race a referendum on Trump. What did Obama think Biden was doing all along? Old Yeller can’t deliver a speech or make remarks without trashing Trump and MAGA Republicans. He demonizes Trump and his supporters. 

Obama realized over the next six months that Biden didn’t get the message. Or, he was simply failing to take Obama’s advice. In December, he returned to the White House. Biden invited him to lunch. Obama’s message this time was reported to be more urgent. He told Biden that the re-election campaign was behind schedule in building out its field operations. He discouraged Biden from continuing to lean on a small group of White House advisers. Again he told Biden that Trump would win in November if he didn’t make changes. 

Voters think Biden is too old to do the job. He is seen as incompetent and not a strong leader. Most alarming for Democrats is that the coalition that helped Biden win in 2020 – black, Latino, and Asian Americans – who are historically Democrat voters, are leaving him. I’m not going to say that Trump will win all those demographics but he doesn’t have to. He just needs to increase his margins from 2020 and that means a loss for Biden. 

More than 30 pollsters, strategists, and campaign veterans from both parties tell TIME that Biden would lose if the election was held tomorrow. 

Biden is losing young voters so he is pandering by moving forward with student loan forgiveness by doing an end-around on the Supreme Court ruling. SCOTUS ruled that Biden’s scheme to stick taxpayers with student loan debt is unconstitutional. He’s doing it anyway.

There is a ban on government devices to use TikTok, yet the Biden campaign is using it every day and bringing in social media influencers to recite DNC talking points. 

Biden’s inner circle remains confident. They point to a strong economy (!), a big cash advantage over Trump, and accomplishments on infrastructure, climate change, industrial policy, and consumer protections. They see Democrats overperforming polls in recent elections. And, they count on abortion and Trump’s unpopularity to bring voters to Biden.

I don’t think anything is on the minds of most voters other than the economy and the open southern border. As long as stories dominate the news cycles with rising prices and inflation slowly on the rise again, little else will matter to regular voters across the country, including in battleground states. Add the Biden border crisis to that mix and the Democrats are right – Trump will win in November. Voters feel the effects of Bidenomics every time they go to the grocery store or fill up their gas tank. 

Quentin Fulks, a Biden deputy campaign manager, said “Our biggest strength is that 80 million people sent him to the White House before. Our challenge is winning people who have already cast a ballot for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris once.” Biden’s voters in 2020 aren’t so fired up to vote for him again. Kamala is even more unpopular than Biden is with voters. Trump may have to find new voters to win in November but Biden has to hang on to his 2020 voters, which he is not doing so far. 

There is little Biden can do to change course. White House staff express that they are nervous. Biden isn’t up to the job of president and he isn’t up to campaigning across the country at a pace that would rival Trump. Trump has the distraction of legal challenges that keep him in courthouses but he still maintains support with thousands of voters who show up for his events. Biden is holding very small events where his handlers don’t let him answer questions from the press. The contrast is stark. 

The time has likely passed when Obama could have somehow pulled a rabbit out of a hat to provide winning advice for re-election. Biden doesn’t listen. That’s good news from the Trump campaign.