Democrats warning against overconfidence
President Donald Trump is entering the final four-month stretch before Election Day presiding over a country that faces a public health crisis, mass unemployment and a reckoning over racism. His Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, is raking in cash. And a series of national and battleground polls suggests growing obstacles to Trump’s reelection.
But the election is far from locked in.
Biden and his leading supporters are stepping up warnings to Democrats to avoid becoming complacent. Former President Barack Obama and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer insist that plenty could change between now
and Nov. 3 and that the party must be vigilant against Trump, who knows few boundaries when it comes to his political foes.
“We understand that what happens five months before the election and what hap- pens at the election can be very different things,” Whitmer said.
Michigan was one of the Midwestern states that Trump carried by a razor-thin mar- gin in 2016, helping him win the Electoral College even as he lost the popular vote. Other Democrats in the state say the strength of the president’s support shouldn’t be underestimated.
“If the election were held today, I think Biden would win Michigan,” said Mich- igan Rep. Debbie Dingell. “But the Trump supporters are out there, and they’re still intense.”
Obama underscored that point this week during his first joint fundraiser with Biden.
“We can’t be complacent or smug or suggest that somehow it’s so obvious that this president hasn’t done a good job,” Obama told thousands of donors who gath- ered online. “He won once,
and it’s not like we didn’t have a good clue as to how he was going to operate the last time.”
Democrats have reason to be cautious. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton was leading by wide margins nationally
and in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — the very states that ultimately put Trump over the top. But in the final weeks before the election, Republicans coalesced around their nominee, leading to his upset win.
Trump is aiming for a repeat this year. He is stok- ing culture wars on health care and race relations. After warning that the 2016 elec- tion would be “rigged” against him, Trump said without evidence this week that the fall campaign would be the “most corrupt election ever.”
Trump and many of his GOP allies, meanwhile, are working to squelch the expansion of absentee voting, which they worry would hand Dem- ocrats an advantage, despite no evidence supporting that.
Trump’s fundraising and organizing still dwarfs those of Biden, who has named state-based staff in just three battlegrounds: Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina. When Biden announced his Wisconsin team Wednesday, Trump’s campaign retorted that its 2016 operation there never closed and already this year has trained 3,200 volunteers, held 750 “MAGA Meetups” and made 6 million voter
contacts, which means their targets have been reached multiple times already.
Still, the current dynamics don’t fit seamlessly with 2016.
Trump benefited from Clinton being almost as unpopular as he was. And as a firsttime candidate, Trump took advantage of his disruptive brand. It’s harder to be the anti-establishment outsider from the Oval Office.
Tr u mp’s Gallup job approval rating stands at 39% this month, putting him in dangerous territory historically.
Since World War II, all incumbent presidents who lost were at 45% or lower in Gallup polls conducted in June of their reelection year. Only Harry Truman, at 40% in 1948, managed a comeback win.