Joe Biden has taken to viciously mocking Donald Trump on the campaign trial, but beneath all of the jokes is real fear.

Democrats are mentally "prepared to lose" the presidential election in 2024, a top Democrat confessed to the Washington Post. 

With polls showing President Trump ahead of his rival in the swing states, fundraiser John Morgan said he's taking nothing for granted.

"As my great-grandfather used to say, ‘I’m as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.’ Yes, hell yes,” Morgan told the Washington Post.

Democrats anticipating defeat?

In 2016, Morgan said, Democrats got complacent and neglected Midwestern states like Wisconsin. But if Biden loses, Democrats won't blame his campaign manager because "we all know this is a jump ball," he said.

“In 2016, we were reading Nate Silver, and we weren’t worried at all. When we woke up, we realized we’ve never been to Wisconsin and we’ve never been to Michigan and then all the Monday-morning quarterbacks are out.”

The 2020 election came down to about 50,000 votes in a handful of swing states.

This year's contest is expected to be close again - too close for comfort for many in the Democratic party's upper echelons.

"You have to be an idiot not to be nervous,” James Carville, who managed Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, said. “It’s uncomfortably close, and the alternative would be to end the Constitution.”

Hedging their bets

Some of Biden's top surrogates are responding to the pressure by browbeating voters to get in line. Hillary Clinton was perfectly blunt in a recent interview, telling undecided Americans to "get over yourselves" and support Biden.

Needless to say, this is not how a winning campaign speaks.

But Biden and his allies are taking some comfort in their significant cash advantage, as Trump burns through millions of dollars to fight off politically motivated criminal prosecutions.

As far as the issues go, Trump has a clear advantage: America is nostalgic for the pre-COVID economy, and crime and immigration have become top concerns, putting Biden on the defensive.

Democrats appear to be hedging their bets by ramping up pressure on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire.

Meanwhile, Biden is taking pre-emptive regulatory steps to stop Trump from firing bureaucrats in the Swamp.