Biden and his campaign have insisted for months that he’s got a plan and he’s sticking to it.

“I am confident,” Biden told reporters on Wednesday after his financial reports revealed his precarious condition.

He also said he isn’t changing anything, and then took a veiled shot at Warren for transferring money from her Senate account before entering the presidential race.

“Remember, we got started later than anybody at all in this campaign, number one. Number two, we did not start off by dropping $10 million from a Senate campaign, wherever that money was raised from, into a race,” Biden said. “Number three, we've been in the process of having about a third of the time that many people have had. And we’re doing fine. Our fundraising is building. We’ve raised a lot of money online and we’ve raised money offline as well. So we feel confident we're going to be ready.”

Biden donor Denise Bauer, a former ambassador to Belgium, echoed the sentiment, citing an uptick in donations at the end of September and the beginning of October.

“The digital side of things are growing; we raised $1 million just online in the first week of Q4,” Bauer said. “It’s just going to continue to grow as the campaign grows.”

Others aren’t so sure.

James Carville, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, said a candidate of Biden’s stature should not be in this position. For instance, Biden’s $9 million cash on hand is even weaker than the $12.4 million John Edwards had in the bank at this point in 2007, when he was running third in polls behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

“It is problematical and not typical,” said Carville, who second-guessed Biden’s strategy for not being more aggressive in attacking President Trump on a daily basis ever since news broke Sept. 20 that the president may have improperly held U.S. aid to Ukraine hostage in order to pressure the foreign country into investigating Biden and his son over a contract involving a Ukrainian natural gas company.

“He had a golden opportunity,” Carville said. “If I was him, on Day One that the Ukraine story broke, the message every day would have been, ‘They know I can beat him and that’s why Trump is doing this.’ Yeah, he did an op-ed about his family being attacked and all that. But if you do this, you do this all the time.”

Karen Finney, a former spokeswoman for President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns, said Biden’s poll numbers “aren’t a problem but they need a fundraising strategy for online small donors.”

Biden’s circumstances may have gotten a post-Ukraine bounce, especially after he directly called for impeaching the president — which other candidates had done long before.

In the 81 days of the financial quarter before the Ukraine news broke Sept. 20, Biden’s campaign had a daily average reported donation of $130,000. In the 11 days after Sept. 20, Biden’s campaign pulled in an average daily donation of more than $296,000.

Still, Biden was blown away overall in fundraising, pulling in only $15.7 million, while Warren hauled $24.7 million and Sanders $28 million. Biden spent more than $17.6 million.

Payroll, taxes and insurance cost the Biden campaign more than $7 million, by far its biggest expense. Various digital services were $1.4 million. Travel expenses were $1.3 million and event-related expenses totaled more than $1 million, about the same Biden spent on media buys and production.

With a campaign struggling for cash, Biden’s decision to drop more than $923,000 on private jets to attend fundraisers stood out, although Biden donor John Morgan said he had to spend the money to make money.

Morgan said he wasn’t worried about Biden’s standing because the field will winnow and Biden will benefit.

“These things ebb and flow,” Morgan said. “We know what Trump knows: [Biden] is the one that beats Trump for sure. If the Democrats risk nominating a socialist, it won’t work in the general [election].”

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Echoing the candidate, several Biden fundraisers say the campaign is still building and increasing the success of its online donor lists. But that’s a time-consuming process. They say the former vice president didn’t have the years to build the lists that Sanders and Warren did, a point that elides the success of Buttigieg or political newcomer Andrew Yang, who could outraise Biden next quarter if the current trends hold.

Biden bundler Dick Harpootlian lashed out at the Democratic National Committee, saying its decision to ban joint fundraising committees this cycle has hamstrung the Biden campaign, which has been under assault by Trump.

The committees, which were controversial in the 2016 primary, are a mechanism that allow supporters to donate sums beyond the typical federal limits and the money can be used for discrete purposes, including travel and staff.

“You can use it for administrative costs, from staff to travel, which would take a huge burden off of most campaigns,” Harpootlian said. “Tom Perez is afraid after ’16 when he was criticized for putting his thumb on the scales. He’s put his thumb back on the scales again, by not doing what they normally do and allow folks to have these.”

“We’re playing catch-up in the online fundraising,” he continued, contrasting the campaign’s efforts with Warren. “She put $10 million from her Senate campaign into her presidential campaign. Those are major, corporate, max-out donors. She’s $10 million ahead of Joe Biden and that’s where the money is coming from. It seems to me she’s again not leveling with the American people.”

