There's a fascinating new report from the Washington Post about how worried Barack Obama is about Joe Biden's chances of winning in 2024.
According to the report, Obama's first concern about the campaign is about the structure, that Biden's chief advisers are in Washington, D.C., while his campaign is in Wilmington, Delaware. Obama thinks the top people should either be in Wilmington or that the people there should be empowered to make campaign decisions, because as it is now, according to the report, they have to go through D.C. Obama believes that doesn't make for an agile, quick response campaign.
While Obama hasn't recommended anyone to help the Biden team, he has mentioned David Plouffe, the Obama report says.
That's sort of fascinating because when he was on MSNBC the other day, Plouffe was urging the tactic of liberal voters coming out to vote for Nikki Haley in the primaries to sabotage Trump or extend the primary.
"I think it’s probably too distasteful for a lot of people," Plouffe said of intentionally casting a vote for Haley to hurt Trump in the presidential election on MSNBC Wednesday. "But for those who would be up for it," the political strategist said, it could be a good "tactical" move.
"I don’t know if it will stop Trump," he added, "but it could help extend the primary."
That shows, again, that Democrats will try all kinds of tricks to block out Trump.
It's clear they're worried about Trump, according to the report about Obama.
Obama has long harbored worries about Trump’s political strength, telling Biden during a different private lunch last summer that Trump is a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize. He cited Trump’s intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem and a polarized country as advantages for the former president in 2024.
The very unpopular Biden at the top of the ticket is a cause for concern.
But some Democrats running on the ticket with Biden are worried. Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is running for her state’s open Senate seat, has expressed concern to allies that she may not be able to win if Biden is at the top of the ticket, according to people familiar with the conversations. A spokesman for Slotkin’s campaign said she “looks forward to running with President Biden.”
Obama has put out a fundraising video with Biden. Not exactly inspiring, when Obama looks more alive than Joe--and Joe even slurs in such a short video. Again, all they do is fearmonger; they have nothing else.
However, one of the funniest things about the report was how aides to both Obama and Biden admitted that the bromance was "always an exaggeration".
The relationship between Obama and the man who served as his vice president for eight years is a complex one. The two men developed a strong working relationship and their families bonded well, but aides to both men say the “bromance” depicted in some pop culture accounts was always an exaggeration.
No kidding, but it was Obama and Biden who were doing the exaggerating about it, not just the media. Just another thing to try to deceive the public.
And why are they backing off of it now and telling the truth? Could it be because at least some of the Obama people can read the room - and want to distance themselves from all the failure that is Joe Biden - even though they might want him to win in 2024.
Not only are the aides admitting things aren't as tight as Biden would have liked you to believe, but it turns out the Biden people are still sore about some things. "Tensions still linger between Obama and Biden camps," the report said.
Some Biden allies who have heard about Obama’s musings on their campaign structure are dismissive, still feeling burned by Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election instead of Biden.The mention of Plouffe in particular irritates some longtime Biden aides, because it was Plouffe whom Obama dispatched to warn Biden that he faced long odds if he decided to seek the presidency in 2016. “The president was not encouraging,” Biden wrote in his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.”The Biden aides note bitingly that Clinton, despite Obama’s support, lost to Trump in 2016, a defeat that remains traumatizing for many Democrats.
Oh, and Biden is very upset about his bad poll numbers, tossing fits about it.
But even Biden is frustrated by his public standing, frequently complaining about his low poll numbers in private conversations with aides. In one meeting shortly before Thanksgiving, he demanded to know what his team and his campaign staff were doing about it.
Biden hit his record low at the end of 2023, at 38 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval.
In sum, it's fascinating that Obama is dictating to the Biden campaign how they should deal with things. It perhaps says something about who's running things here. But there's only so much they can do to sell a very bad product in Joe Biden, and it sounds like people in both groups are losing patience with each other.