Are Democrats "Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory"?

There's not any way to make the post-debate panic in the Democratic party look like anything but a party in disarray.  Former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who served on the January 6th committee in the House and who has endorsed President Biden's re-election campaign has tried to put a positive spin on the confusion and chaos by saying that all of the discussion about Biden getting out of the race is a sign that Democrats appreciate the opinions of party constituents, while with Republicans, they kick the dissenters out of the tribe.  And he should know.  

But President Biden's debate performance, two weeks ago today, had absolutely no effect on his polling numbers.  In fact, depending on which set of polls a media source selectively decides to cite, he either gained ground and is leading in most of the battleground states, or he didn't appear to move the needle much.  It seems that nothing much is moving the poll number needle, which indicates to me some shenanigans going on behind the scenes with pollsters, paid by corporate interests, trying to make it look like President Biden is headed for defeat, in order to give Trump as much momentum as possible.  

Up to this point, no Democrat who carries any consequential weight of reputation in the party has pushed for the President to stop his campaign and let someone else run.  A scattered few members of Congress, unrecognizeable by reputation, are insisting that he step down.  The only Senator who got close, Mark Warner, of Virginia, backed away from the edge.  Even Joe Manchin has come out and said that re-electing President Biden is the best thing for the country. 

It's the media that keeps pushing this, mostly because they like the ratings they get when there's sensational news to report.  So they keep pushing this story to the top of the pile, beating a dead horse, because no matter how shrill they get or whiny they become, President Biden has been elected as the party's nominee by the over 14 million people who voted for him in the primaries.  It is his decision alone.  Those Democrats who have been hunted down to make comments are publicity seekers, and their continued presence in the media, which helps keep this chaos going, betrays their priorities.  It's their own power they're protecting, they don't care about the threat that Trump poses to American Constitutional Democracy.  If they'd say "NO!" to the interviews, this would dry up fast. 

And while the idea of allowing all of the factions to have their say is very much a Democratic party value, the value of this conversation has run its course.  Take a hint from the people, who have poured millions of dollars into his campaign post-debate, setting records in terms of both cash received and number of donors providing it.  There's a message in that, coming from the people who support this President the most.  

Stop it!  

Reality Check:  This is What the President is Running Against 

It's craziness like this that gives Trump enough support, and alters the course of the election, making his candidacy viable.  There's a serious political dysfunction going on in this country that has brought us to the point where a corrupt, now convicted felon, former failed President who tried to subvert the Constitution and steal an election he lost by inciting a mob to attack the Capitol while Congress was in session, has the kind of apparent political support that he does, with the backing of the Republican party.  Put this same set of circumstances into the mix in any other election in this country's recent history, and it would be seen as a coming landslide for the Democrats across the board, from the White House through Congress to the state houses.  It should be that now. 

So someone please explain to me why it isn't?  

Much of it is that the media no longer operates like a free press, but has divided into camps with special interests.  It's made up of outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, that are propaganda mouthpieces for the conservative extremists, or the major networks, including CNN, that survive as corporate interests, with those owners more interested in the bottom profit line than in reporting the truth.  That leaves the independent media, a small group without the resources to reach large audiences.  That's part of the problem.  

But the other part of it is that Democrats are having their traditional difficulty with their ability to grasp, control, and publicize the narrative, and with their traditional habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  We, as a party, tend to make mistakes at the most inopportune moments, squander advantages like all of the political negatives Trump keeps on giving us, the latest being his 34 felony convictions, his own miserable debate performance full of lies, his gift of three of the six most corrupt, biased, partisan Supreme Court justices in history, his core Evangelical constituency's producing of a platform they call Project 2025, a draconian set of promises that will prove incredibly unpopular, and his name appearing on the Jeffrey Epstein contact list multiple times.  

Over the top of all of that, some Democrats are working hard to direct the attention of voters away from all of those negatives, and focus it on a ridiculous and unnecessary crisis of their own making, in their own party.  

We've already muffed messaging promoting the Biden Presidency as one of the most successful of the current century, and since the Second World War.  There are so many positives that have just been completely missed, that would be making a real difference in people's perception of this President's job performance.  The same old problem, not being able to control the narrative, has reared its ugly head.  

Now, the attention that we are getting is covering up Trump's massive trail of corruption, and focusing on what appears to be a party in disarray, fretting, fussing and fighting because, as one media source put it, "they know Biden is losing this election."  I know no such thing, but it sure doesn't look like anything else.  Once again, we've lost control of the narrative.  

Here's some evidence of what we are missing.  The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project, Made up of Presidential Historians, Ranked Trump as the "Worst President in American History."  They ranked Biden 14th.  

So someone, with a reasonable measure of common sense, who is educated, articulate, and politically experienced and savvy, please explain why this race is, at best, a dead heat, and if the polls are anywhere near accurate, why Biden is trailing?  

I'm giving sacrificially, out of social security benefits, every month, and giving up a weekend to drive to a battleground state to help register Democratic voters, and making phone calls and spending hours a week writing and promoting this blog.  

Please, can someone in the Democratic party who knows and has confidence, assure me that I am not wasting my time?