Campaign Kool-Aid drinking is putting Democrats in danger of an election disaster

When the media frenzy calms over former President Donald Trump’s questionable conviction in his New York bookkeeping case, the real campaign will commence. It is likely that Kool-Aid drinking Biden supporters will continue to prioritize progressive policies over the economic issues vexing the majority of voters. That is why Biden is going to lose.

Sane lifelong Democrats like James Carville and David Axelrod — two savvy advisors who helped guide Democratic presidents to second terms — have raised alarms that the messaging coming from the Biden campaign is tone-deaf.

Democrats are ignoring them. And as a conservative Republican, I hope they keep doing so right up until Nov. 5.

Carville does not understand why the Biden campaign continues to talk about Gaza while burying discussions about the economy. Axelrod has complained that there does not seem to be a sufficient sense of urgency or panic, given Biden’s dismal poll numbers.

But the Biden administration and campaign seem more interested in listening to its unconditional supporters than to truth-telling Democratic winners of bygone times.

This is all great news not only for former President Donald Trump, but also for Republicans down-ticket. As The Hill reported last week, recent polls show Trump leading Biden in many of the key battleground states, even as Republican candidates for Senate in those states trail Democratic incumbents. In other words, Biden is running behind Democrats in his own party in multiple swing states.

To put it in the simplest terms, Biden is a lousy candidate with low poll numbers in states he has to win, and he will therefore be an anchor around the necks of many Democratic incumbents.

This is certainly true of Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who have to get re-elected in states Trump where will win by large margins. The top of the ticket could even prove fatal for Democratic senators who currently lead their opponents in the polls, such as Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.). This could lead to Republicans winning the Senate.

If Trump continues to dominate Biden in swing-state polls, it won’t be good news for House Democrats, either. The elections of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 (in which Republicans picked up 34 House seats) and President Barack Obama in 2008 (Democrats picked up 23 seats) provide a good indication of what might happen if Biden goes into election day and performs the way the polls currently suggest.

As for the presidency, Biden trails Trump among independents by a 12-point margin, according to an NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll. But it is at the state level where the picture is bleakest for the incumbent.

Biden has not led Trump in a single poll of Arizona, Nevada, or Georgia this entire calendar year. If Trump carries all those, plus the states he won in 2020, he will have 268 electoral votes. Just one more vote (perhaps the one from Nebraska’s Second Congressional District) and there would be an Electoral College tie that Trump would likely win.

Biden, meanwhile, hasn’t led Trump in even a single poll of Pennsylvania since March. He narrowly trails Trump in the Decision Desk HQ-The Hill poll averages in both Wisconsin and Michigan. And let’s not even talk about what happens if Trump manages to put other states into play, such as Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, or Virginia.

So those Democrats who still speak as if things are great and nothing needs to change? They are clearly delusional.

Evidence of mass political hallucination exists within the talking points Biden’s supporters parrot about the economy. The Biden-supporting talking heads call the voter’s perception that the economy is bad “a vibe-cession,” as if it were just a feeling detached from reality. They ignore that voters feel bad about having to live paycheck-to-paycheck while still suffering from cumulative 20 percent (and rising) inflation since Biden’s inauguration. They attribute the problems Biden faces to social media, not to Biden himself.

The Biden campaign’s message is neatly encapsulated in Catherine Rampell’s Washington Post piece, “Nearly everything Americans believe about the economy is wrong.” the basic idea is that Americans are doing great economically but are too stupid to understand. Democrats think they can make the problem disappear by talking down to voters this way, by explaining away the pain people experience when they go to the grocery store or try to buy a house with 8 percent mortgage rates.

Republicans are exceedingly fortunate that Biden administration propagandists have drowned out the sane minds in the Democratic Party.

Brian Darling is former senior communications director for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).