by With less than 10 months until the 2024 elections, the nerve center of President Biden’s bid for a second term is not located at his campaign headquarters in Delaware, but a few meters from the Oval Office.
The president and his chief strategist, Mike Donilon, have repeatedly discussed when to move him into the campaign: perhaps after the 2022 midterm elections, then after the 2023 off-year elections, and again in late 2023. This It occurred after the president told his aides that he wanted to keep Donilon at arm’s length.
Anita Dunn, the veteran Democratic operative who stepped in to help revive Biden’s fledgling operation four years ago, is crafting the re-election message again, even as she oversees communications at the White House. Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s White House deputy chief of staff and former campaign manager, is also dividing her day job with her role as one of the campaign’s most powerful voices.
So far, almost none of the president’s inner circle have left for the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, leading some donors and strategists to worry that much of Biden’s team remains cloistered inside the White House. With less than a year until Election Day, the president has a campaign with two different centers of gravity, advisers juggling two jobs at once, and months of internal debate about when to consolidate everyone in one place.
A campaign spokesman dismissed concerns about the campaign’s structure, noting that previous presidents had sometimes left their top political advisers in the White House.
“We invite everyone concerned about the existential threat that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans pose to our freedom and democracy to channel their energy into organizing, donating, and talking to their friends about what’s at stake in this election.” said Kevin Muñoz, the spokesman.
But the situation has led anxious Democrats, including some within the campaign itself, to publicly and privately pressure Biden to step on the accelerator. That includes former President Barack Obama, who discussed the urgency of the 2024 election and the structure of the president’s campaign with Biden in November, according to several people familiar with the discussion. Washington Post first reported the conversation.
In interviews with more than a dozen Democratic operatives, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy, several said they were concerned that a bifurcated campaign was contributing to a slow start to what should be a furious battle for a second. mandate. John Morgan, a top Biden donor, said the unrest came from Democrats who were terrified by polls showing razor-thin margins for Biden in battleground states, as well as the potency of former President Donald J.’s candidacy. of Trump.
“That’s why you hear so much, you know, backseat driving,” Morgan said. “Because we all believe we have the answer. And, you know, the campaign gets tired of listening to donors, political operatives and supposed experts.”
At the same time, he said, Biden’s recent speech directly attacking Trump a day before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was evidence to him that the campaign had begun to respond to the anxiety expressed by his supporters.
“That was red meat,” Morgan said. “That’s what the donor class wants and believes is necessary.”
Anxiety within the party has been growing for months. Last spring, Biden named Julie Chávez Rodríguez as his campaign manager and sent her to her hometown of Wilmington to prepare the re-election effort. Since then, the headquarters staff has slowly grown, with about 80 full-time members now working there, according to campaign officials.
But most of the president’s top advisers in the White House have not budged, even as the political calendar has moved forward. People familiar with the dynamics inside the White House said Biden liked having them around him and that aides were nervous about how leaving could affect his influence with the president and among other colleagues in the building.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates called it a “widespread pastime in Washington” to talk about the president’s staff, adding: “During every re-election campaign, there have been high-level advisers in the White House working on related policy issues. , within the rules.”
Polls show the president has struggled to revive his approval ratings over the past year, even among important Democratic constituencies such as young and minority voters, despite an improving economy and slowing inflation. In a Gallup poll, Biden finished the year with a 39 percent approval rating, what the organization called “the worst of any modern president facing a tough re-election campaign.”
Other polls, including a New York Times-Siena College poll conducted late last year, show Biden narrowly beating Trump.
Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a progressive think tank in Washington, called concerns about the campaign’s structure “just a perennial political story,” but said nervousness about the president’s standing with the public was real and should be addressed. seriously at the beginning of the election year.
“Everyone is nervous,” he said, “and the downside risk is not that Mitt Romney becomes president. “It is that the republic is collapsing and that is why people are very afraid.”
Biden campaign officials said decisions about staffing and hiring timing at headquarters and in battleground states were driven by a plan to conserve resources until Americans pay attention.
“The president’s campaign is doing the important early work to build our coalition and will continue to expand as voters begin to think more about the November elections,” said Mr. Muñoz, the campaign spokesman.
With the Republican primary set to begin in Iowa on Monday, the Biden campaign is beginning to ramp up its senior staff. On Thursday, Chávez Rodríguez announced the hiring of three veteran Democratic strategists to lead Biden’s re-election efforts in key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.
And last week, Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans and former lieutenant governor of Louisiana, resigned from his White House post overseeing the president’s infrastructure spending and will move into a senior campaign position.
Sarah Longwell, a Republican anti-Trump strategist who is working to get undecided voters to vote Democratic this year, said Biden’s campaign needed to do a better job of presenting an army of surrogates who can make the case to Democratic voters who Biden deserves another four years.
“You have all these young women. You have these incredibly impressive swing state governors. Get your people out there,” she said, noting that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., “goes on Fox News every night to talk about why Donald Trump is the best, and so is everyone else.” ”.
“What the moment requires is to get on the campaign trail sooner rather than later,” he said.
That change is already underway, campaign officials said. Biden has stepped up her campaign appearances this year. And new television ads are scheduled for January in battleground states, part of a $25 million campaign that began last year.
James Carville, the outspoken Democratic strategist who ran Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, said Democrats should spend less time trash-talking and more time supporting the campaign’s efforts to keep Biden in the White House.
“The Democratic National Committee, state party chairs, labor, progressive advocacy groups, they all want a seat at the table,” he said. “You can take a seat as long as you keep your mouth shut. “I’m old and I can say it because I’ve been around, but that’s the truth.”
Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting from Des Moines, Iowa.
