"It is just too f***ing early. Did we not learn anything from 2016 that polls are sh*t?"

“I don’t know of anybody who has taken as sustained and vitriolic a negative pounding as Biden and who has come through it with the strength he has,” said a top Biden adviser. “So why isn’t the argument not that he’s a ‘fragile front runner,’ but instead why is this guy so strong? How is he able to withstand this? Because it is unrelenting. Every story that has been written about Biden for a month has been negative! I would ask Warren and Sanders and these folks: He’s been pummeled for months. For months! So why is he going to fall apart now?”…

They brandish the many predictions of his demise as evidence of their more sophisticated understanding of the Democratic electorate. “He’s still leading the race nationally. He’s leading in Iowa. It looks like he’s in a dead heat in New Hampshire,” said the top Biden adviser. “I don’t know why the story in New Hampshire isn’t how Bernie Sanders went from sixty to fourteen. And why is it that Biden is beating Warren in Massachusetts? And he’s way ahead in South Carolina. And this is all on the back end of really the most vicious press I think anyone’s experienced. So that to me is a statement of strength. And anyone who’s sitting around waiting for him to fall apart—you know what, it hasn’t happened yet.”…

“The narrative that Biden has staying power is bullshit,” said a senior adviser to one of Biden’s rivals. “It is just too fucking early. Did we not learn anything from 2016 that polls are shit? The dude does not know what is going on. He is not in fighting shape to beat Trump. You put him on stage together with Trump and they’re both gonna forget shit but Trump is sharper. The dude is just old and it’s showing and they’re fighting every day to make the case that’s not happening but it is.”