It’s Repub­li­cans’ turn to pan­ic about their nom­i­nee and the polls

With for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump trail­ing in the polling aver­ages for the first time in months, Repub­li­cans are start­ing to pan­ic.
Trump’s deficits as a can­di­date have some Repub­li­cans pri­vate­ly pin­ing for the switcheroo Democ­rats pulled off at the top of their tick­et from Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris.
As their con­ven­tion approach­es, Democ­rats appear to have breathed new life into the cam­paign, with a lit­tle bit of help from their friends in the media.
The Repub­li­can pan­ic is noth­ing like that Demo­c­ra­t­ic freak­out after Biden’s June 27 debate flop, which ulti­mate­ly knocked the sit­ting pres­i­dent out of the race. But it is rem­i­nis­cent of the gnaw­ing doubts Democ­rats had about Biden going into that debate.
Democ­rats were grow­ing increas­ing­ly wor­ried that Trump, a defeat­ed for­mer pres­i­dent they once believed was spent as a polit­i­cal force, had a small but con­sis­tent lead in the bat­tle­ground states and looked like he might ev …