MIAMI — It’s no surprise that Hillary Clinton's campaign wants rank-and-file Democrats to stay concerned about the idea of Donald Trump in the White House: supporter emails like Monday’s titled, “He may still beat me” is how they’ll drive voters to the polls and cash into the campaign accounts.

But behind the scenes, high-level party officials who are watching Trump’s poll numbers slump further are growing increasingly worried about Democratic overconfidence that could give the Republican nominee — and some flagging GOP Senate candidates — an opening to climb back into contention.


Fear of complacency is suddenly a frequent topic of discussion among both Capitol Hill influencers and the financiers backing Clinton’s bid. The worry, spelled out in a series of private conversations, conference calls, and campaign communiques over the last two weeks, is that the party’s efforts could end up underfunded and its turnout operations neglected against an opponent whose campaign is one big political death-defying act.

“From the very beginning when things were going well or not so well, [campaign chairman] John [Podesta] and [campaign manager] Robby [Mook], all the way down the line, have been saying, ‘yeah, these polls are great, but they don’t matter,’” explained Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, a prominent Clinton supporter in the crucial swing state. “They’ve been pretty consistent, whether she was having good weeks or bad weeks, on staying focused."

Yet that message about the need for constant vigilance has gained new urgency as Clinton claims leads in every swing state, according to the POLITICO Battleground polling averages, and as she hasn’t fallen behind Trump in a national poll in weeks.

Clinton allies have good reason to feel confident, starting with the campaign’s year-plus head start on Trump in building up a nationwide campaign infrastructure. The constant drip of polls is also heartening to Democrats: his image appears to be slipping further in relation to hers, her trustworthiness ratings have been ticking up and several swing states appear to be drifting out of Trump’s reach. Recent national polls have given Clinton leads of 8, 10, 13, and 15 points. Meanwhile, both Clinton’s political team and her main super PAC have even started suggesting they could expand their operations into Republican-friendly states like Arizona and Georgia — perhaps even Indiana and Missouri, in an effort to create an electoral blowout and stitch together Senate coattails.

Against that backdrop, top Democrats are now reminding each other: Three months is a long time to Election Day.

“Although obviously you’d rather have these numbers than not, these poll numbers are completely inflated, and I think the campaign has got to operate as if it were a dead-even race,” said Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state under Clinton who remains close to her, echoing the thinking of senior campaign officials who insist Clinton’s real polling margin is closer to the low single digits. “They’re not letting up, they’re trying to make sure people understand it’s going to be a very close election."

It’s not just a concern among Clinton’s lieutenants. It also extends to Democratic senators looking to take back control of their chamber.

“We can’t be over-confident,” warned Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid after campaigning for Clinton in Las Vegas last week. He had just been discussing polling figures with his likely successor, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, he revealed, and his takeaway was wariness about over-exuberance that could see Democrats start coasting rather than pushing through to November: “I really am [worried about that]. I’ve been there, done that."

At the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters, that was also the message on the campaign’s private weekly check-in call with its finance council, which tends to feature a senior campaign aide updating the call participants on his or her recent work.

Last week's speaker was national press secretary Brian Fallon, who took the opportunity to stress that while the campaign does believe Clinton is leading Trump, it also expects national polling to tighten once again after her post-convention bump subsides, according to a Democrat on the call.

Mook hammered that message home with a two-page note to top fundraisers on Monday titled “Wake Up Call.” He reminded the wealthy recipients that Trump could still out-raise Clinton in the home stretch on the strength of his own surprisingly potent grassroots army and his wallet, that the Clinton campaign remains behind the cash pace set by Barack Obama in 2012, and that the national polling remains fluid.

“None of us wants to wake up on November 9th wondering what more we could have done to prevent a Trump presidency,” Mook wrote, urging the donors to step on the gas as they collect campaign funds. “The threat to our country and the world is too great to leave any room for second-guessing ourselves. With Donald Trump and his supporters showing that they are raising the resources they need to compete, we need to do the same."

Between that increasingly loud drumbeat and Clinton’s public exhortations that winning the election will take a firing-on-all-cylinders base mobilization effort (“We want to turn out the biggest vote we possibly can,” she told supporters in Kissimmee, Florida on Monday), the worry has started to sink in yet again.

“If we don’t stay focused on that ground game then the poll numbers aren’t going to matter,” explained Ryan. “Over the last ten or fifteen years, we know how close these elections can be. And as Democrats we’ve been on both sides. That’s very sobering for us as a motivating factor."