Biden is ahead. Democrats are still stressed

(CNN) – Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump nationally and leads or even with him in most changing state polls. He is beating Trump on nearly every issue on the minds of voters, from the coronavirus and healthcare to “law and order.”

And yet for many Democrats a constant anxiety persists, which somehow seems to increase with each dose of good news.

Four years after Trump’s surprising victory, the psychic wounds of Hillary Clinton’s defeat remain fresh. When a series of new polls were released this week that showed Biden’s lead widening, the collective reaction from liberals, especially among the highly engaged online crowd, ranged from a shrug to near outrage.

See Trump and Biden polls head-to-head.

The nervous responses are largely based on the desire to avoid complacency in voters who might be misled into thinking that Biden has the race in the bag. But for Democratic operatives who experienced Clinton’s disappointment closely, even the slightest flicker of positivity can push them back.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, independent poll forecasters, unlike actual pollsters, who anticipated a close race, described the race as Clinton’s to lose. So it did. In the absence of a shared and consistent understanding of what many experts overlooked, Trump was credited with supernatural power over the reasoned science of the polls. Prominent Democratic operatives turned pundits who branded eager supporters “bed-wetting” issued mea guilt.

When the latest round of 2020 polls showing Biden ahead fell, a kind of backlash on social media followed soon after. His answer, in short: “Ignore them!” or “Don’t be complacent!”

The tension is amplified, in material terms, by concerns about Trump and the efforts of some Republican lawmakers to suppress the vote or question the outcome of the election. Trump’s refusal to say he will accept a losing outcome, regardless of what he does in the end, is itself a tool to depress voters’ enthusiasm, experts say. And there are fears that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic could affect the reliability of participation on both sides.

Still, the odds, by almost every available measure, are in Biden’s favor if the process proceeds without interference. Not that it makes Democrats feel better.

David Axelrod, former chief strategist to President Barack Obama and a CNN commentator, said the countdown to Election Day had unleashed a compound level of uncertainty.

“Now there’s bed-wetting,” he said, “about the absence of bed-wetting!”

Worries turn to cash

The prospect of Trump being re-elected represents a “catastrophic disaster,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank and a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton.

The disappointment in 2016 was “crushing to the soul,” she said, leaving her with “superstitions and anxieties” that make it “difficult to sleep at night,” even with the numbers that seem favorable to Biden.

“If I told you there is only a 25% chance that your house will be bombed tomorrow, that would not reassure you,” Tanden said. “I think that is what is happening.”

When asked in an otherwise optimistic call with reporters on Friday if he still had the scars from four years ago, Guy Cecil, president of Priorities USA, the super PAC chosen by Clinton and now Biden, responded: “I’m not familiar with it. with this 2016. talk about. “

Anguish among Democrats and a near denial of the good news in front of them, he added, could be a powerful tool in the weeks leading up to the election.

“We are making good use of that fear,” Cecil said, noting the increased organization and donations. “Am I optimistic? Yes. But I still have serious concerns and we have to keep crossing the finish lines.”

The dollar numbers, at least, confirm it. Top-down Democrats on the ballot are getting huge amounts of cash.

Biden is set to announce the second consecutive month of raising more than $ 360 million over a four-week period, a staggering number that has helped the once cash-strapped Democratic campaign overcome the significant fundraising lead. Trump initial.

The money boom has also seeped into Senate and House races, and not just through traditional battlefields.

In Iowa, an outreach state for Democrats, Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield raised a staggering $ 28.7 million in the third quarter. Al Gross, an independent who won the Democratic Party nomination for the Senate in Alaska, raised $ 9.1 million during the same period, an unheard of figure in a state that was an afterthought for most Democrats earlier this year. And former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who spent months searching for cash to shore up his quixotic presidential bid, announced this week that his Senate campaign had received $ 22.6 million in the past three months.

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime advocate for the party’s fundraising and CNN contributor, said he’s “never seen the level of enthusiasm from donors,” a phenomenon he attributed to a mixed anticipation that Biden will win. and he fears Trump may still get him out.

“I’m glad (Democrats) are acting like this, because 2016 is etched on everyone’s mind,” McAuliffe said, noting that Clinton led, albeit by a smaller margin, than Biden in most end-of-season polls. . “If you believed the polls (in 2016), Hillary Clinton right now would be sailing for re-election and Donald Trump would be doing a reality TV show on the Golf Channel. That’s not where we are at.”

Democrats don’t need to be reminded.

A new Florida poll by Quinnipiac shook the liberal Twitterverse on Wednesday because it showed Biden with a remarkable 11 percentage point lead over Trump, 51% to 40%, in a state where top-level elections are routinely decided by the most senior. thin. margins.

“Honestly, I didn’t even click on it. I didn’t even click to see how and why it was so wrong. So if that gives you any indication of how useless someone doing this for a living feels (the Quinnipiac poll ), “said Kevin Cate, who makes his living as a Democratic strategist in Florida. Two years ago, he saw his candidate, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, lose by about 32,000 votes, less than half a point, to Trump-backed Republican Ron DeSantis.

Still, Cate expressed confidence that the presidential race would end differently, noting a dizzying rate of return votes among Democrats, and predicted that Biden would defeat Trump in Florida by 2%, a blast by Sunshine standards. State.

“Anything over 1% in Florida is a landslide,” Cate said, “because we don’t have mountains.

‘Am I giving an accurate narrative?

Pollsters, meanwhile, are projecting confidence in their numbers, even as Democratic and Republican supporters, albeit for different reasons, question their authority. Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said he was well aware that his survey results “will surely generate some kind of reaction” from interested outside observers, but did not allow him to enter into this thought.

“My concern is, am I giving an accurate narrative of what’s going on?” Murray told CNN. “There is a range of uncertainty there and we have to convey that. But within that range, the numbers are the numbers. We are trying to understand why the electorate moves the way it moves, if at all, and what are the key issues that are driving people and what worries them. “

Murray has also taken steps to illustrate variability by publishing three numbers from most survey rounds: results among registered voters, the broader universe, and then two among different models of “likely voters,” which are shaped by expectations. Informed by pollsters about who he really is I’m going to vote.

The recent Monmouth poll in Pennsylvania showed that Biden outscored Trump by 12 percentage points with registered voters. The advantage was 11 points in favor of Biden in one of his likely voter models and 8 points in another, which represented lower voter turnout.

When asked about Democrats’ concerns that potential Biden voters would be pleased and stay home when any of those numbers are presented to them, Murray said he doubted it: the dynamic driving the 2020 campaign, he believes, It is very different from four years ago.

“Part of the reason people stayed home (in 2016) was because they really didn’t feel strongly that any of the candidates was going to change their lives in a meaningful way,” Murray said. “Even if they disliked one candidate more than they disliked the other candidate. In this case, it’s a clear decision between Trump and not Trump. And the vast majority of voters are strongly on one side of that line or the other.” .

Eyes on the prize

On the ground, grassroots groups, as dedicated to electing Biden as to launching lobbying campaigns from day one of his possible administration, are focused on getting voters, especially young progressives, to the polls and ensuring that your votes are counted.

Nelini Stamp, director of strategy and partnerships for the Working Family Party, said Democrats don’t need to choose between heartbreak and action.

“We want to win overwhelmingly. It is very important for all of us to keep our eyes on the prize. We must not give in. It is good news, but things can change and with everything that is happening, especially with the year 2020, we do not know what awaits us, “said Stamp. “So we have to be able, as far as possible, to get the vote in every way.”

The tone of Democrats’ relationship and interaction with the polls has taken a 180-degree turn from just a few months ago, when they had substantial influence in the direction of the primaries. The poll numbers, along with the fundraising, were the candidates’ entries to the debate stage, leading many campaigns to agonize over each point.

“For Democrats, the primaries were competing to choose the best nominee from a group of friends; the general is facing and undoing the national trauma and consequences we experience every day since the 2016 election,” said Tim Hogan, assistant to the senator from Minnesota. Amy Klobuchar’s primary campaign. “No matter how good the polls look, this latest exercise will always cause more anxiety.”

The constant stream of general election polls showing Biden leading, he added, has the cumulative effect of someone telling Democrats to “calm down.”

“But that’s never going to work when the world is on fire around you.”

This story was first published on CNN.com, “Biden is ahead. Democrats are still stressed.”