Top Dems: Biden has losing strategy

• But that puts them on an island within much of the party about what will decide the election, as polls consistently have shown Biden tied or behind even after a slight bump following Trump's criminal conviction.
• Several polls have indicated voters are deeply concerned about democracy but they are most worried about inflation and the economy. They've also shown Biden's support slipping among key Democratic voting groups: Blacks, Latinos, young adults and union members, but the Democracy message is resonating with older voters.
• Biden's former chief of staff Ron Klain, who has known Donilon for decades, told Axios his view is: "In Mike I trust."

What they're saying: A Democratic strategist in touch with the campaign told Axios: "It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary."

• People close to the president told Axios they worry about raising concerns in meetings because Biden's group of longtime loyal aides can exile dissenters.
• "Even for those close to the center, there is a hesitance to raise skepticism or doubt about the current path, for fear of being viewed as disloyal," a person in Biden's orbit told Axios, speaking on condition of anonymity because of those dynamics.
• "There is not a discussion that a change of course is needed."

Driving the news: Donilon, Biden's top political aide, privately has reassured people that voters will "do the right thing" in November by embracing democracy and rejecting Trump, according to a Biden aide who has heard Donilon say it.

• "Joe Biden is a great president, and great presidents get re-elected," is another common Donilon refrain.
• Donilon — one of the most experienced and understated Democratic operatives in the country — has worked with Biden since 1981. He has argued that polls aren't fully reflecting voters' concerns about democracy.
• In response to questions for this story, Biden advisers told Axios: "These people have clearly not heard from Mike or anyone on the team the president's detailed case for re-election."

Donilon articulated a nuanced version of this to The New Yorker's Evan Osnos earlier this year, saying that Jan. 6 would affect the 2024 election much like 9/11 was central to the 2004 election.

• "The Democratic Party didn't want to believe it was a 9/11 election," Donilon told Osnos. "…I decided, after the election, I would never be part of a presidential campaign that didn't figure out — with clarity — what it wanted to say and stick to it."

By Election Day this year, Donilon believes "the focus will become overwhelming on democracy. I think the biggest images in people's minds are going to be of January 6th."

• The Biden advisers told Axios: "This is Joe Biden's strategy — and Mike Donilon and his top advisers are in agreement with the president. The polling shows that democracy ended up a top issue of concern for voters in 2022, and it will be in 2024."

Biden's inner circle is cohesive but insular: Aides joke that there's an unofficial "no new friends rule."

• The group includes First Lady Jill Biden's top aide, Anthony Bernal, and new Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini — low-profile but powerful aides who have worked mostly for the Bidens since 2008 and are known for their focus on loyalty.
• When Tomasini was still head of Oval Office operations last year, she and Bernal surprised people by sitting in on interviews for Biden's campaign manager, a person involved in the process told Axios.
• A source familiar with the interviews told Axios: "This was not a surprise. Annie and Anthony are part of the senior advisers group, and every senior adviser was part of the interviews."

Zoom in: Despite a year head start, a larger campaign team and spending more than twice what Trump's team has spent on ads since early March, Biden's numbers against Trump have largely stayed the same the past few months, with the slight bump after Trump's conviction.

• During the ad campaigns and Trump's trial, however, Biden's average approval rating hit an all-time low on June 9 of 37.4%, with 56.7% disapproving, according to FiveThirtyEight. His current approval rate is 38.4%.

Longtime Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson, who worked for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 primary against Biden, told Axios: "If the election were today, we would lose. Can that change? Yes. Is it on the path to do so? I don't see that yet."

• "The stakes for the debate" on June 27 between Biden and Trump "are sky high," he said.
• Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz responded: "Everything this campaign is doing is for the election in November."
• He added: "Winning campaigns focus on voters, not the chattering class. We are heads down, doing the work we need to do to win again this November."

Reality check: The angst among many Democrats is about the larger narrative Biden's team is telling rather than its tactics, as it's poured money into field programs and zeroed in on key voters.

• Democrats close to the campaign told Axios that morale and management have largely improved since Jen O'Malley Dillon left the White House and joined the campaign earlier this year.
• Donilon frequently talks about democracy, but the campaign's most-run TV ad so far is about Obamacare, according to an analysis by NPR and AdImpact.
• And polls do show there are many voters concerned about democracy after Trump tried to overturn the results of the last election.

The intrigue: Biden aides worry that they didn't take full advantage of the head start they had in 2023.

• Biden's inner circle often makes decisions by committee. That slowed down the campaign's decision-making, people familiar with the dynamic told Axios.
• There also has been internal second-guessing over the team spending $25 million-plus on an ad buy last fall that didn't move Biden's numbers.

Zoom out: Many Democrats think the president and his closest aides learned the wrong lessons from Democratic wins in 2020 and 2022, and it's causing them to misread 2024.

• Biden's core team, including Donilon, believes Biden won in 2020 because his "soul of the nation" message resonated and he presented a clear "moral contrast" to Trump.
• In 2020, Donilon wanted to focus on Trump's character over the economy, even though "our own pollsters told us that talking about 'the soul of the nation' was nutty," he told the New Yorker.

Biden's closest aides also argue that framing Republicans as "ultra MAGA" — along with Biden's speeches about democracy, which were mocked by some Democrats at the time — helped prevent a predicted "red wave" in 2022.

• Biden and his close team have defied their doubters in the 2020 primary, the 2020 general election and the 2022 primaries. That's led them to be defiant toward those voices this time.

But many Democrats — including some in the administration — say the Biden team's view of itself is distorted:

• Biden won the 2020 Democratic primary largely because the party consolidated to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and picked the candidate who polls showed as the most competitive.
• Even with a once-in-a-century pandemic, Biden barely beat Trump by less than 45,000 votes across three states. "Biden didn't win, Trump lost," one Democrat close to the White House put it.

One Democratic operative who worked on several close races in the midterms told Axios: "2022 was a classic case of running away from a president, and their takeaway was, 'Wow people really like us.' "

• "... I get why they spun it that way, but I also think many of them believe it."