New: The good vibes Harris's campaign are masking tensions among competing factions, as Harris loyalists and Obama alumni are grafted onto Biden's campaign.
“The entanglement of these different entities has led to many people feeling a real lack of role clarity," one person involved in the campaign told Axios.
My latest: axios.com/2024/08/29/kam…
New people are remaking the campaign on the fly.
The result is a large and at times unwieldy team, with internal worries about cohesiveness when inevitable stumbles arise, 6 people involved in the campaign tell Axios.
Biden's campaign was insular, with a few long-serving aides making big decisions.
The Harris campaign has become a diffuse "Frankenstein" team with multiple power centers of ppl close to Harris, some on the Biden team, and the new Obama folks.
Another person involved with the campaign said there isn't "as much tension at the very, very top.”
The dynamic there is more about figuring out “Who is the first among equals with the vice president?"
Still there is confusion about who's in charge happening more often "two or three rungs down”
People involved in the campaign are hoping the short timetable before Election Day — now 68 days — won't allow tensions to fester.
"It's just a mad dash," said one person involved in the campaign. "Things are colliding occasionally, but it's not malicious."
The clunky organization will be fine as long as the team believes it can win, another said.
Part of the tension: Some on Biden's team thought many top Obama aides had been second-guessing their decisions for months — and were part of the effort to push the president to end his run for re-election.
Harris brought on prominent election lawyer Marc Elias. Biden's camp had split with Elias last year over concerns about his strategy.
Elias, now helping with the Democrats' recount strategy, is close to former Attorney General Eric Holder who vetted Harris’s Vp’s and served with Tony West, Harris’s brother in law.
@HansNichols and my story about the Elias-Biden split last summer:
axios.com/2023/07/31/bid…
Some Biden aides are also frustrated by having to defend Harris for her past support of progressive issues such as Medicare for All and banning fracking.
Harris's and other Democrats' support for those issues in the 2020 campaign was partly why Biden won the nomination and beat Trump, they argue.
They see some vindication for Biden as Harris is now changing positions on such issues.
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