It’s a mess…
The Kamala Harris campaign is reportedly swarming with “internal worries about cohesiveness” according to new reports from Axios.
The Harris team’s attempt to avoid making Biden staffers feel cast aside has resulted in confusion about who is in charge, according to the report. One person involved told Axios there isn’t “as much tension at the very, very top, where the question is more: ‘Who is the first among equals with the vice president?'”
The main architect of Biden’s campaign messaging, Mike Donilon, has gone back to the White House, but Harris has kept most of Biden’s other campaign staffers, Axios reported, citing six people involved in the campaign. The vice president also has tapped her own staffers and prominent aides from former President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, resulting in a “Frankenstein” team with competing power centers.
“The entanglement of these different entities has led to many people feeling a real lack of role clarity,” another person involved in the campaign told Axios, citing more confusion “two or three rungs down.”
“It’s just a mad dash,” one person involved told Axios. “Things are colliding occasionally, but it’s not malicious.”
Some of the Biden campaign aides told Axios they thought the former Obama staffers had been second-guessing their moves for months, as some were involved in pushing Biden to exit the race.
Though some on Biden’s team believe Harris is more electable than the president after his June debate performance against former President Trump, and welcome the “burst of enthusiasm,” some are disappointed they have to defend Harris for her past progressive stances on “Medicare-for-all” and banning fracking. Her positions on those issues, along with those of other Democrats, in part contributed to Biden’s 2020 nomination win.
Instead of changing the makeup of Biden’s campaign team, Axios noted, the vice president instead shifted her messaging from Biden’s focus on “democracy” to Harris’ new push for “freedom” and “future.”
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