Barack Obama fears close 2024 race with Trump, tries to 'move the needle' for Biden, closest confidants say

The people closest to Barack Obama are expressing increasing alarm about 2024 at the same time President Joe Biden’s campaign looks to quell worrisome voices within the Democratic Party.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, a close friend who is often considered Obama's political alter ego, told USA Today Monday there would be "incalculable damage" to the country if former President Donald Trump wins the November election.

Asked if Obama shares that view, Holder replied: "Absolutely. I don't think it's a question about that.”

"I think that's what motivates him. I think that's what will continue to motivate him," Holder said.

The former president’s wife, Michelle, revealed she’s "terrified" about the election's outcome in a podcast interview this week.

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Trump is leading Biden in multiple surveys, including a Jan. 3 USA Today/Suffolk University poll. That survey finds Biden narrowly trailing Trump, the likely Republican nominee, 39%-37%; with 17% supporting an unnamed third-party candidate.

Other Democrats, who recently marked the 15th anniversary of Obama’s historic win, are also sharing their fears that Trump could return to power with a vengeance. They say Biden's campaign must lean heavily into the emotions progressive and independent voters are having more urgently.

"I'm convinced more than ever before, that we have to save the American democracy through our actions, and that we cannot allow Trump to be dictator for one minute, much less one day, one week and give him four years," said Anton Gunn, a South Carolina Democrat who worked on Obama's 2008 campaign.

David Axelrod, a longtime personal friend and adviser of Obama, last year went as far to suggest Biden drop out of the contest, though people close to the former president have emphasized Axelrod does not speak for anyone but himself.

This puts a unique spotlight on Obama, who is speaking with Biden regularly and honestly about his thoughts on the race, according to sources close to the former president who spoke with USA Today.

He is increasingly being tasked with coming to his former vice president's rescue as polling shows Biden struggling with Black, Hispanic and voters younger than 35, who are essential to any victory.

Many Obama alumni, such as pollster Cornell Belcher and campaign manager Jim Messina, who spoke with USA Today, downplay the reported panic and tension between the two camps, pointing to various examples that presidential reelections are often behind this far out.

But others acknowledge that, rather than optimism, there is dread going into 2024 that Biden's campaign cannot dismiss.

How worried is Obama about Biden in 2024?

Obama's office said the former president is well aware of the stakes.

For now, his strategy is based on "driving impact," and being deliberate in "picking our moments because our objective is to move the needle," according to senior advisor Eric Schultz.

What that looks like in public is the former president "finding creative ways to reach new audiences," with tools directly tied to mobilizing voters, Schultz said.

The president and his former boss chat regularly, and Obama thinks the election "will be a very close race," according to a person close to Obama who spoke to USA Today.

Obama views the 2024 race as having "major structural advantages that will favor Republicans," in the form of rising polarization, intensely loyal Trump voters and a Trump-friendly conservative ecosystem, especially online.

Others close to the former president said he views Trump's reelection as "dangerous" and has been consistent in delivering that message to all Democrats, including Biden.

Holder said the former president's deepening concern is felt by how plugged in he is with Biden and his campaign in the early stages.

"This is certainly the campaign that President Biden is going to have to ultimately make decisions about," Holder said.

"President Obama is going to do everything he can to help in that regard, and that means campaigning, but it also means sharing strategic advice with (Biden)," he added. "And who better than President Obama to be a primary advisor to the campaign?"

Obama's 'mentor-in-chief' role to Biden, younger Dems

Obama remains the brightest star in the Democrats' political constellation and Biden's most lucrative fundraiser, outside of White House principals, according to campaign officials.

Standing should-to-shoulder with the president in a recent campaign fundraising ad, which the president's team said brought in roughly $4 million, Obama told viewers, "our democracy depends on you."

Those who have worked intimately with the former president convey that their old boss is keenly aware of how consequential this election will be and how vital his involvement is at every level.

"I think he's playing a lot of roles simultaneously," said Eric Lesser, a former Massachusetts legislator who worked on the 2008 campaign.

"He's sincere about wanting to support school committee members and city councilors, up to presidents. So there's almost like a mentor-in-chief role that he's taken on."

Obama remains a sounding board for the president, sources tell USA Today. He has an open "yes" to requests from the White House and Biden campaign, and their staffs have a "family" connection, multiple sources said.

He has also notedly been hosting private discussions with younger Democratic lawmakers and candidates, including progressive House members such as Reps. Maxwell Frost, of Florida, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York.

At a time when many voters express concern about Biden's age, many alumni from the previous Democratic administration see Obama's chief role in 2024 as a necessary generational bridge for a party trying to court Gen Z voters with an 81-year-old incumbent.

"It's funny because he's simultaneously an elder statesman in the sense that he's been through a lot of battles and has a lot of experience, but he's also very young and has a big, long career in front of him," Lesser said.

Poll: Dems less enthusiastic about Biden

Yet it is impossible to quiet Democrats who are publicly biting their nails about Biden's chances, including prominent figures in the party's power circles and Obama network.

They point to how most 2024 polls show Trump in the lead with a little less than 10 months to go, and a failure to sell progressive voters on accomplishments, such as securing $132 billion in student loan debt relief despite resistance from Republican opponents.

Axelrod, who served as a senior adviser to Obama, rattled the race when he suggested last year that Biden should think about leaving the race.

He later said the surveys showing Trump ahead in battleground states represented "very dark" news for Biden's reelection campaign.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., who was instrumental in helping Biden win the Democratic nomination in 2020, said on CNN's State of the Union he's "very concerned" about the president's support.

Gunn, the South Carolina Democrat who considers himself a Clyburn protégé, was instrumental in selling the public on the heart and soul of the Affordable Care Act when he was part of the Obama administration. He said the Biden campaign isn't engaging voters, particularly African Americans, on the urgency of 2024 beyond facts and statistics.

"What keeps me up is that if we only make the rational, thoughtful and deliberate argument of why Biden is better, and don't recognize that there needs to be an emotional current through this campaign," he said.

"The same way Obama had an emotional currency, the same way Trump had an emotional currency when he won in 2016, there's a big fear that this could all go south because people vote emotionally. They don't vote rationally."

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released Jan. 3, for instance, shows only 18% of primary voters selected “very enthusiastic” when asked to rate their excitement about Biden on a scale 1 to 10.

Roughly 44% of GOP primary voters said the same when asked to rate Trump.

Third party woes and Biden's selling points

The Biden campaign and other Obama alumni push back at many of these conclusions while trying to calm a widening apprehension among Democrats.

Quentin Fulks, who serves as Biden's deputy campaign manager, said that instead of "parachuting into communities of color a few weeks before the election," the president's reelection team is investing earlier and more aggressively than in previous cycles.

The Biden campaign has invested more than $25 million in Black and Latino media, according to Biden campaign officials.

"We are meeting voters in every community where they are and putting in the work to earn every vote and let voters know how President Biden and Vice President Harris have delivered for them in an unprecedented way," Fulks said.

"The stakes are high, and we aren’t taking anything for granted."

Other Democratic campaign veterans who come from Obama's network throw cold water on political forecasters, who had similar gloomy predictions in years past.

"I am amused at the collective amnesia every election season of the press," said Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked for both Obama presidential campaigns.

"No candidate or campaign starts off a year or year and a half out where they want to be or where they need to be. If so they would, we would have no need for campaigns."

Belcher noted how headlines wondered if Obama was “toast” in the early stages of his 2012 reelection bid, and that predictions from FiveThirtyEight, a political data analysis site, rated Obama with a 17% chance of winning against Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Messina, who led Obama's two campaigns, said surveys "are famously bad" in the earlier stages of a presidential race because voters don't have a focused choice in front of them.

"Elections are a choice, and we haven’t formalized that choice yet. Once voters know their options, their opinions change," he said.

One element that could make 2024 different than the Obama reelection 12 years ago, however, is the role third−party contenders are playing.

When respondents are asked about their choice when ballot includes the seven possible presidential candidates—such as independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West; or Green Party nominee Jill Stein—Trump holds a 37%-34% lead, according to the USA Today/Suffolk poll released this month.

That margin shrinks in Biden's favor when there are fewer candidates. The president trails 44%-43% when there are no other third party contenders in the race, according to the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1%.

The data points to significant frustration among potential Biden voters, said David Paleologos, director of Suffolk's Political Research Center.

"The bet for Biden right now is once we get this to a binary choice, one-on-one, people will not vote for Trump," he said. "And that's a big gamble, because that assumes that all of the other third party candidates will go away or their support will dissipate."

Paleologos said more progressive-leaning voters have consistently expressed being, "fed up with the staleness of the choices that are being offered."

Belcher, the Democratic pollster, said the problem Biden's campaign will be challenged to solve over the next 10 months is selling Black, Hispanic and younger constituencies on its accomplishments.

"For me, Biden has really better story to tell these young, diverse voters than Obama did," he said. "But these voters have a stronger affinity to Obama than they do Biden."