Democrats 'scarred' by 2016 election fear a late Trump surge
by David M. Drucker, Senior Political Correspondent |
| October 21, 2020 06:30 AM
Democratic insiders are plagued by a nagging case of political PTSD as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden carries a lead into the final two weeks of a hard-fought White House campaign, confident in their party’s nominee but afraid to count President Trump out after the unlikely comeback he pulled off four years ago.
Logically, Democrats look at Biden’s position relative to Trump and are heartened. The former vice president leads the incumbent by 8.6 percentage points nationally. He tops Trump in key Rust Belt battlegrounds, is on offense in traditionally red Arizona and Georgia, and threatens in Iowa and Ohio — states the president won big in 2016. Compared to Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Biden is overperforming with key voting blocs that could decide the election.
But Democrats have been here before. Four years ago, Trump erased Clinton’s significant leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the final 10 days of the campaign and won a dogfight in Florida to score a sizable Electoral College victory.
Democratic strategists believe the polling data. But “scarred by 2016,†as one otherwise optimistic party insider put it, Democrats are bracing for the possibility that the race could tighten, either naturally or because of surprise developments.
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