Allies of President Donald Trump are starting to worry that they're running out of time to seriously dent former Vice President Joe Biden's lead in the polls.
Politico reports that the Trump campaign has been hurling all kinds of mud at Biden -- including attacks on his mental state and his purported soft approach to China -- but so far none of it has stuck.
"Listen, the American voters remember Biden as the happy grandfather during the Obama presidency," a former Trump 2016 campaign official explained about the difficulty in bringing Biden down. "The more you can do to imprint a damaging impression of Biden heading into the fall, the better off the Trump campaign will be."
Still, this didn't stop one GOP described as "close to the White House" from second-guessing the Trump campaign's work so far.
"Take the gloves off and put him away," they said. "If you have the cash advantage and you have all of June, why are you not burying him?"
The biggest worry among Trump allies is that Biden will be able to coast for the next few months while the Democratic Party machinery makes the election into a simple referendum on the president's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which they believe would likely lead to defeat.