While keeping in mind the old adage “It’s not the votes that count, but who counts the votes,” Democrats are absolutely freaking out about what a dumpster fire Joe Biden is heading into the 2024 election.

Susan Walsh/AP

According to Politico, “A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.”

And while Democrats have spent 2024 on a “joyless and exhausting grind,” now, nearly five months away from the election, “anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation,” according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives who spoke with the outlet.

“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said one Democratic operative close to the White House, adding that Biden’s terrible polling “are creating the freakout.”

“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’” the source added, dramatically.

The freakout comes as Trump leads in 5 key states, while young and nonwhite voters are shifting allegiances:

Strategists catching the vapors

And while the White House isn’t yet facing reality, Democratic strategists are telling it like it is…

But Democratic critics of the campaign’s approach — while agreeing that abortion should be a winning issue — said they’re challenged when pressed by friends to make the case for why Biden will win.

“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.” -Politico

And then we have this suspected offworlder, former Clinton strategist James Carville, who says Democrat messaging is full of shit:

James Carville: “We keep wondering why these young people are not coming home to the Democrats. Why are blacks not coming home to the Democrats? Because Democrat messaging is full of shit, that’s why.”

Democrats went from “It’s the economy, stupid!” to “You’re stupid if you… pic.twitter.com/9q2Rpipu7f

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) May 25, 2024

Pollster Nate Silver, who was more or less unpersoned by the Democrats for getting 2016 wrong and has since become moderately redpilled, shreds Democrat messaging that the economy is ackshually doing great, and people complaining about inflation are out of touch.

Talk about how the economy is doing well overall, Biden’s jobs record, wage growth, etc. All of that is fine. But there’s a long track record in global political history of inflation making people upset. To deny that is empirically and politically stupid.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 28, 2024

Good morning..reminder that the inflation was an intentional, calculated, policy decision…they took your spending power to bailout heavily indebted government entities…have a great day.. https://t.co/HHFr3L45OT

— jim iuorio (@jimiuorio) May 28, 2024

Silver’s FiveThirtyEight has Biden’s average job rating at 38.4%, vs. 38.1% on March 7 – suggesting that whatever the Biden campaign has been attempting isn’t working…

Whatever the Biden campaign has been doing over the past two months — and it’s a lot of activity, including $25 million in swing-state ad spending, according to AdImpact — it has had only a limited effect. According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s average job-approval rating on March 7, the date of his State of the Union Address, was 38.1 percent. As of Friday, it’s 38.4 percent. -Politico

Politico then notes that Trump has been eating away at Biden’s lead in ‘safe’ blue states, conducting what they called “psychological warfare” in New York, California and New Jersey (dramatic!).

Trump, meanwhile, has already started his incursion into safe blue states. His campaign’s psychological warfare in New York, California and New Jersey — where House districts will determine control of Congress’ lower chamber — is spiking Democrats’ already-elevated blood pressure.

“New York Democrats need to wake up,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “The number of people in New York, including people of color that I come across who are saying positive things about Trump, is alarming.”

Meanwhile, Trump is crushing Biden when it comes to fundraising – having raised $25 million last month, not including a record-setting $50.5 million haul from an event in Palm Beach, Florida.

“The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone,” one Democratic adviser told the outlet.

And of course, the Biden campaign is playing dumb (or they’re just dumb. We’ll go with that.):

“Trump’s photo-ops and PR stunts may get under the skin of some very serious D.C. people as compelling campaigning, but they will do nothing to win over the voters that will decide this election,” said campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz. “The work we do every day on the ground and on the airwaves in our battleground states — to talk about how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that’s keeping prices high, and highlight Donald Trump’s anti-American campaign for revenge and retribution and abortion bans — is the work that will again secure us the White House.“

Keep telling yourself that, Kevin.