Barack Obama has been a very busy man in recent weeks. Within hours of Joe Biden's disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump. the former Democratic president was working the phones looking to engineer a quick Biden exit.
That was not to be. Biden was within three points of Trump in the national polls and felt that Obama, Pelosi, and the whole gaggle of establishment Democrats were running scared. There were still four months to go before election day, and Biden felt he had time to recover.
He was not to be given that time. Biden was dumped from the ticket and unceremoniously kicked to the curb in favor of a vice president with the lowest approval rating in history.
Kamala Harris has since been transformed. She's no longer the bumbling, fumbling punchline to a political joke. She's the savior of the nation, girding her loins to do battle with the Evil One, Donald Trump.
But just because the media is portraying her as a world-beater doesn't mean anything. She's still a disaster area as a candidate. So Barack Obama has decided to step out from behind the curtain and run the Harris campaign.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hired a battery of new senior advisers to her campaign this week, moving swiftly to replace lifetime loyalists of President Biden with Democratic campaign veterans, including multiple leaders of Barack Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts.
David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, joins Harris as senior adviser for strategy and the states focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Obama’s reelection, who has been working in recent months with Harris, is the new senior adviser for strategy messaging. Mitch Stewart, a grass-roots organizing strategist behind both Obama victories, will become the senior adviser for battleground states. David Binder, who led Obama’s public opinion research operation and previously worked for Harris, will expand his role on the Harris campaign to lead the opinion research operation.
Not very subtle of Obama, is it? Obama's motives are complex, but surely one of them is his desire to humiliate Joe Biden. Obama and Biden's feud began when Obama entered the Senate in 2006 and Biden immediately saw him as a rival for his 2008 presidential run. Obama resented Biden's condescension and put him in his place during the 2008 campaign.
As for the Obama veterans joining Harris' campaign, they aren't policy wonks. They're nuts-and-bolts politicos who will flesh out Harris' ground game and bring experienced hands to the job of building a national campaign.
David Plouffe is the most important new hire for Harris. Plouffe has an encyclopedic knowledge of Democratic politics and politicians and can help Harris in swing states. Stephanie Cutter has been massaging Biden's messaging and Obama's before that. She's a veteran of four presidential campaigns and will add experience to a campaign that many observers believe lacked a focused message.
The new structure around Harris is expected to address the bifurcated nature of the Biden campaign leadership — with a campaign team in Wilmington that effectively answered to Biden’s inner circle in Washington, which advisers said sometimes slowed decision-making. The team operating out of Delaware will now be significantly larger at the top as it make the final push to Election Day, less than 100 days away.
Obama will still be mostly out of sight. But his imprint is already on the Harris campaign. He will have input in most major non-strategy decisions and will help Harris navigate the Democratic waters by smoothing her way with many Democrats who still see her as a bumbling fool.
Closer to the election, Obama will hit the road and probably make several joint appearances with her in battleground states. The former president can still draw a crowd, and his presence in the campaign opens the wallets of Democratic donors.
Whether it will be enough for a Harris victory remains to be seen.
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