Out: good vibes. In: turf warfare.
I got a lot of flak from Democratic friends for saying that Kamala Harris faced a legitimacy problem in that the nomination was thrust upon her by a stitch-up. It meant that different groups would not have a process for reconciling themselves to her leadership. I primarily had in mind Democratic voters.
I did not anticipate that this problem could be solved simply by leveraging Democratic relief at Biden’s being off the ticket with a campaign that had no policy positions at all. It would just be about unity and futurity itself rather than prioritizing and addressing the issues.
But now an Axios report reveals that the legitimacy problem has become an organizational problem for the Harris campaign.
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…
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 29, 2024
That makes perfect sense. Typically, in the nominating process, members of your team — in this case, the Harris people — would legitimate their roles in leading the party by winning the primary election. Members of previous administrations would be let in on terms set by the winners, or through a process of negotiation while the contest was ongoing. (Note how RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard won honorary transition-team chairs with Trump by endorsing him during the general.)
The Harris nomination would not have worked if Harris had been the one instigating it. Instead, she relied on the Obama people and on Nancy Pelosi, who worked assiduously for several weeks to wound Biden in the press, probably including the orchestrating of congressional statements and the George Clooney op-ed in the New York Times. It’s also possible that the disorganization flows from Kamala Harris herself, since she seems to lack the virtues of self-possession and knowing her own mind. Harris was notorious for burning through staff early on in the Biden-Harris administration. It’s possible the loyalty to her is shallow indeed. If she took the position of nominee on the premise that she would be an attractive face on a collective Democratic elite administration, that can also lead to organizational turf warfare, because her position is too weak in itself to stop it.
This continued infighting may also hamper Harris from ever articulating fully whether she is running as a moderate or relative progressive. Danger ahead.