We're exactly three weeks away from the polls closing on Election Day. This is typically when campaigns settle into their final plans, hammer the ground game, and drive out as many voters as possible as early-voting states start getting ballots. That is happening with Republicans, as Trump is hitting all the states and campaigning every day. Democrats are taking another path: infighting.

Axios reported over the weekend that tensions were rising in the White House between Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their staff. To put the best spin on it, Axios describes the relationship between Biden and Harris as "increasingly fraught in the final weeks before Election Day."

Obviously, the White House denies everything in this report. The denials come from the same people who did everything but swear under oath that Joe Biden was never going to step out of the race. These pieces come on the heels of a week-long blitz on Harris sinking or stalling in national and public polls. In short, it looks like the knives are out in the White House, and they are ready to provide excuses for a potential loss.

The White House isn't alone. Barack Obama has reentered the limelight, trying to push Harris over the finish line. He went out of his way to blast Black men for voting for Trump or just not voting for Harris and views this election as a referendum on his personal legacy.

It eats at Obama that his replacement wasn't Clinton or Biden but Donald Trump. And if Trump wins again, it'd be a defeat of Obama's legacy. For all the vitriol that the left has poured out against Trump for a variety of reasons, Obama takes it all far more personally. That's why his part in kicking Biden out matters; he's partially why we're sitting here in a Trump versus Harris race.

We're in this spot because internal polling on the Democratic and Republican sides shows Harris in a tough spot. Harris, the White House, and the Democratic Party as a whole believe Harris is losing the race. Does that mean she is losing? Not necessarily. All public polling still shows a tight race with Harris with a narrow lead on a national level. The Harris sugar high is gone, but she still has a slight edge.

Is she sitting at levels you want as a Democrat to win the race? No, not even close. Polling suggests she's running well behind Biden's 2020 margins and is below where Clinton was too. But even with that, the race is still well within the margin of error where results could flip either way.

The problem for Democrats isn't that reality; they understand the many paths this election could take. The problem is that they believe they're losing. That's the only conclusion to draw as the Harris campaign throws everything at the wall, hoping that something sticks. She's reversed her media strategy, Tim Walz is running around to football games and pheasant hunts in a last-ditch effort to appeal to men, and surrogates like Obama, Clinton, and others are trying to reverse the course.

Democrats are throwing out everything, including the kitchen sink because it's Hail Mary time. They do not believe this is a race that they're winning. In 2016 and 2020, the polls shifted towards Trump at the end, as undecideds started breaking towards Republicans. There were polling errors in both cases, and it was pretty simple that Trump voters were missed in the polling.

Do we get something similar again? That's harder to figure out. Looking at the polls, Trump isn't sitting at a lower level like he was in previous years, and pollsters may be measuring his coalition more accurately during this cycle. What is more complicated is who is in the Harris coalition.

We simply don't know who Harris is appealing to in each of these states. The problem is that instead of reflecting the strength of Obama's 2008 and 2012 coalitions, which had heavy support from minorities and the working class, Harris is polling worse with both of those groups in decades. She's pulling in extra support from the suburbs and women, but it's hard to tell if that's enough to offset the losses elsewhere.

Of course, the polls could also be overstating Harris's losses with these voters. She might be fine with minorities and the working class, and a polling error is coming in her favor. But it's clear that the Democratic Party does not believe that. They believe they're losing, and in the same breath, Trump and Republicans believe they're in a good position heading into Election Day.

We'll find out soon if Harris can beat what her internal polls tell her about the race. Harris is spending three days in Michigan and two days this week in Pennsylvania, with stops in Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina. Noticeably left out are Nevada and Arizona, states that are leaning more heavily toward Trump in recent polls. Surrogates will be in these other states, of course. But the top of the ticket is going to where they need the most resources.

This is not a confident campaign headed down the stretch. It's not the place you want to be in the final days of a campaign. Again, polling suggests she's well within striking distance. If she wins, all the infighting will vanish overnight. If she loses, we'll look back to this week as the moment when the campaign knew the writing on the wall - and the infighting will only have begun.