WASHINGTON — Democrats are notoriously quick to worry and slow to appease.

President Joe Biden tried for months to ease the growing panic in his party until it finally consumed him and he abandoned his re-election bid. The fear briefly subsided when Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the ballot and her poll numbers soared.

With Harris’ numbers stagnating for weeks, many Democrats are once again worried that the election is slipping away and Donald Trump may yet come to power.

Harris seems to agree with the collective nervousness and recognizes that Democrats are more willing to go to the polls and help her win if they fear they might lose. She likes to tell her followers that she runs like she’s behind.

But she is facing a new round of internal criticism as party activists complain that she is not attending enough rallies, after weeks of complaining that she is not giving enough interviews.

Trump likes to suggest that he’s ahead – and proclaims that he can’t lose if the Democrats don’t cheat.

While Harris’ motivations are strategic, Trump’s are personal.

For Trump, the idea that he is losing at everything is an affront to the image he has cultivated for decades. Success, or at least the semblance of it, is baked deep into his identity. He touts his golf tournament victories at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida, and celebrates his television ratings, and in the political realm he still insists, without evidence, that he is the rightful winner of the 2020 election.

Voters may value an underdog, but if Trump portrays himself as such, he would expect to lose to an opponent he describes as mentally impaired. He can’t bear that so easily.

In reality, no one wins or loses less than three weeks before the election. Polls show that neither Harris nor Trump has built a lead outside the margin of error. Harris erased Biden’s deficit in the polls after she ran in July, and the contest has been in a dead heat ever since.

“She is trying to motivate her voters because she is not performing at the levels among key Democratic groups that Hillary Clinton did in 2016 or Joe Biden did in 2020,” said John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster.

Claims that Harris is an outsider amount to “a conspiracy by liberals to make us overly confident on Trump’s side,” he added. Previous Democratic campaigns “tried to convince us four and eight years ago that we couldn’t win, and we won one and narrowly missed the other.”

As useful as it may be for Harris to downplay victory expectations, Democratic strategists warn that they see flaws in her campaign strategy. Some argue that she needs to increase the pace of her rallies while showing the spontaneity that voters like to see.

Harris has conducted significantly more interviews with the news and entertainment media in the past two weeks amid concerns within the party that her campaign is becoming too insular. On Wednesday, she ventured into unfriendly territory and took part in a combative interview with Fox News.

She has also attended smaller, more intimate events. On Sunday she spoke at a church in Greenville, North Carolina. And on Tuesday, she stopped at two Detroit stores to meet voters, the same day she gave an interview to popular radio talk show host Charlamagne Tha God.

Still, there was something formulaic about her demeanor that she had to overcome, said a Democratic congressman.

“You have to unpack them,” the lawmaker said. “She has to show her emotions and her passion. Donald Trump is crazy, but he is real. She needs to show people she’s real and people need to believe she’s fighting for this job.”

Harris has held two rallies since Sunday — one in Greenville, North Carolina, the other in Erie, Pennsylvania — with many more to come. On Thursday, she is scheduled to hold three campaign events in Wisconsin, part of the trio of “blue wall” states that Democrats believe are the surest path to victory.

The next day she is expected to hold three more campaign events in Michigan, another building block in the blue wall. After another event in Michigan on Saturday, she is scheduled to fly to Georgia for a rally in a battleground state that Biden narrowly won in 2020 and that Democrats would like to hold.

In the Internet age, candidates have numerous opportunities to reach undecided voters. With the billion dollars raised, Harris has sufficient resources to find them. For example, her campaign even put some money into gaming site IGN to reach an elusive group of voters who aren’t interested in political news.

“There are a lot of different voters who get information in very different ways that you have to reach,” David Plouffe, a former senior Barack Obama campaign official who now advises the Harris campaign, said in a recent podcast. “And you want to be in their communities, you want to be in their social media feeds.

“Kamala Harris and (vice presidential candidate) Tim Walz will go wherever there is an audience that is essentially people who we believe will be crucial in this election,” the lawmaker added.

Although rallies are old-fashioned, they tend to be reported on and organize vehicles for campaigning. At the Harris rally in Greenville, Democratic activists walked up and down the line of people waiting to enter, clipboards in hand, asking for volunteers to knock on doors and call targeted voters.

A Democratic strategist was alarmed that Harris didn’t hold more rallies last weekend.

“It’s nothing short of a damn headache,” the strategist said. “They should do four or five events in Pennsylvania in one day. There’s people sitting there saying, ‘All hands on deck.’ I’m willing to work as hard as they can.’ But maybe she should start working as hard as she can.”

A look at Obama’s schedule at a similar point during his victorious presidential bid in 2008 shows a series of well-attended rallies.

On October 9, 2008 – 27 days before the election – Obama held three rallies in Ohio, which he won. The next day he held two more rallies in Ohio. And on October 11, 25 days before the election, he attended and won four rallies in Pennsylvania.

By contrast, at the same point in the 2016 calendar, Hillary Clinton had a loose public agenda and was comfortably ahead in the polls.

On October 13, 2016 – 27 days before the election – Clinton arrived on the set of Ellen DeGeneres’ TV show. The next day she attended a fundraiser in Seattle. A few days later, she appeared at a Broadway theater for a fundraiser with “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and a number of other A-list celebrities.

She lost in a surprise.