NYT: Panic Escalates on Left as Biden Imperils States Dems Bank On

Panic is escalating on the left as President Joe Biden’s candidacy is imperiling traditionally blue states, and there are no signs that he is willingly ready to step aside for another candidate, the New York Times reports.

Citing strategists, Democrats up for election, and local officials, the outlet’s Nicholas Nehamas and Kellen Browning highlighted in an article published Friday afternoon the political contours are shifting in states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia.

This comes on the heels of a Politico report indicating New York has suddenly morphed into a battleground state. This is backed up by polls conducted before Biden’s abysmal debate performance on June 27, which showed Trump within single digits of the president.

The blue-leaning states are part of the beefy base of electoral votes Democrats bank on in a given presidential election before focusing on battleground states.

Biden’s slip in these states has also coincided with an effort by former President Donald Trump to expand the universe of battleground states to include these blue leaners, as he first told Breitbart News he would in December.

The Times interviewed several prominent Democrat figures, including Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and former Obama senior campaign strategist David Axelrod, about Trump’s prospects in usually Democrat states.

Walz confirmed his state has turned into a battleground and pointed to the “uncommitted” movement, where roughly one in five Democrat primary voters selected the uncommitted option in Minnesota in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Uncommitted earned 11 delegates in Minnesota.

“There is still work that still needs to be done to shore up the party, especially around some of the non-committed votes,” he said.

The Obama campaign strategist also indicated concerns are real on the left about Trump’s odds in these states.

“I don’t think it’s fool’s gold,” Axelrod told the Times. “I think it’s something that has to be taken seriously.”

Trump has shown that he is competitive in states like New Jersey, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Virginia.

A Co/efficient poll out of New Jersey in late June found that Trump had a narrow edge over Biden, at 41 percent to 40 percent, with independent Robert Kennedy Jr. at 7 percent. Another 13 percent were undecided. It sampled 810 likely general election voters the day before and the day of the June 27 debate. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.43 percentage points.

An 1892 poll jointly commissioned for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and GOP senate candidate Nella Domenici’s campaign found Trump just one point behind Biden in a deeper field and two points back in a head-to-head race. The poll was first reported by the National Journal Review, and Breitbart News learned that 1892 sampled 600 likely voters between June 19 and 24. The MOE was ± four percentage points.

As of July 12, Biden is hanging on to a thin 1.5 percentage point edge over Trump in the FiveThirtyEight polling average in Minnesota at 42.3 percent and 40.8 percent, respectively.

And in Virginia, a Fox News poll published on June 6 before the debate had Trump and Biden at 48 percent apiece in a two-way race. Biden led by one in a deeper field. Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research jointly conducted that poll of 1,107 registered voters in Virginia from June 1-3, and the MOE was ± three percent.

The report comes a day after Biden’s high-stakes NATO presser, which avoided total disaster, leading one Democrat to describe it as “the worst possible outcome,” and as worries are fervent throughout the party that Biden will torpedo the rest of the Democrat ticket if he is the nominee.

Though Biden mistakenly called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin” in the lead-up to the press conference and mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump,” a Democrat source told Fox News’s Jacky Heinrich Biden bought himself more time.

“Worst possible outcome,” the source wrote in a text. “Unless you are Hunter and need a pardon.”

“Because it prolongs him stepping down?” Heinrich replied.

“Yep,” said the source.

Biden’s former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was of the same mind as the source that Biden bought the campaign time.

“It doesn’t mean it’s a win for the process because this purgatory and this in-between is a real challenge, and the uncertainty is what’s a challenge for down-ballot candidates,” she added during her appearance on MSNBC after the presser.

And on Friday morning, Biden’s former chief of staff, Ron Klain, called for an end to Democrat “freak out” and for the party to unify.

“With yesterdays press conf and this new poll, it’s time to end the freak out and unite behind the Democratic nominee and the only person who has ever beaten Trump,” Klain declared in a post on X.

Heading into the evening, CBS News reported dozens of Senate Democrats and House members were expected “over the next 48 hours to issue statements calling for President Biden to step out of the race,” citing four Democrat “sources with knowledge.”

The poll he was referring to is a national NPR/PBS News/Marist poll that shows Biden at 50 percent and Trump at 48 percent. This is a net two-point swing away from Trump and toward Biden compared to an earlier NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published on June 18, days before the debate, showing them locked at 49 percent.