Joe Biden aides reportedly worry their meetings are too congratulatory

Former Vice President Joe Biden seems to feel his 2020 run may be faltering. His campaign aides still reportedly don't want to tell him that.

Biden's presidential campaign has all the trappings of a winning run: An experienced, beloved politician with a tragically heroic backstory, Edward-Isaac Dovere describes in The Atlantic. But polls and fundraising totals are showing Biden isn't thriving the way he'd hope, and his staffers are reportedly struggling to claim otherwise.

"Biden's campaign lives in a dual reality," in which he's simultaneously winning most polls and yet still "being written off as finished," Dovere writes. Biden aides chalk a lot of that rhetoric up to the media, making "vaguely Trumpian" complaints in which they claim reporters "cover only bad news about Biden and fail to understand what actual heartland voters want," Dovere continues.

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Yet behind the scenes, Biden is "aware that there are issues with the campaign, especially as it relates to money," one staffer said. His Iowa organization is smaller than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and even South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's, and fundraising shortfalls have turned into cutbacks on TV and online ads. That fact has led some aides to "feel like they're just spinning one another in staff meetings about how well things are going," some tell The Atlantic — and even Biden himself is reportedly "realizing with dread that the race might be slipping away."

When asked about his supposedly falling campaign, Biden unequivocally defended his fundraising and organizing. Read more at The Atlantic.