When a poll came out earlier this month showing that President Biden trailed Donald Trump in battleground states one year ahead of the election, lots of Democrats started panicking. In an essay for Politico Magazine, Barack Obama's 2012 campaign manager writes that he could relate. One year ahead of that election, Democrats were engulfed in a similar doom-and-gloom scenario, particular after stats guru Nate Silver gave Obama a mere 17% chance of winning, recalls Jim Messina. "Immediately, we had donors, elected officials, and my Mom absolutely freaking out," he writes. "We couldn't get supporters to rallies. People were calling for me to be fired." The Obama-is-doomed narrative didn't play out, of course, and Messina ticks off a number of reasons why Democrats can expect the same in 2024.
Consider, for example, that only a few days after the poll came out, "Democrats took Republicans behind the woodshed" in the off-year elections. Pay more attention to that than early polls, which are notoriously unreliable, advises Messina. He has specific advice on what Democrats should be doing, such as trumpeting Bidenomics, but two of his key points are to remind people that Biden already has defeated Trump once and that many Americans have not started paying close attention to the election. Expect the polls to change when they do. "I believe voters will move in Biden's direction when they hear what the president has done, and get reminded (by Democrats and Biden himself) of the chaotic, lawless circus that was Trump's presidency." (Read the full essay.)
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