It is 93 days to Election Day. For Kamala Harris it has been a 0-60 race for 13 days that has gone without a hitch. But,
Despite its outward success over the last two weeks, internally the Harris campaign is undergoing a bumpy period of transition as the candidate tries to balance maintaining continuity with the existing campaign operation while also placing her own trusted operatives in key roles.
It's a start-up with a one-day sale. She has no room for a misstep; the most reasonable favorable outcome lands her with 270 electoral votes, the bare minimum. Yet, her room with no error is cluttered with a start-up's unpacked boxes and unarranged furniture under foot and salespeople being hired and slotted and bumping into one another.
In each of her three previous positions as a CEO, as California Attorney General, as United States Senator, and as Vice-President, Kamala has stumbled out of the box. Rough first years. Her 2020 campaign for president collapsed like a top-heavy building and she withdrew before Iowa. The lines of authority in her organizational flow chart were clear as a plate of spaghetti. Crucial decisions took forever to get made and then the ground changed and she stumbled over the new terrain. There were so many who had her ear that her messaging was as tangled. Answering questions, "you could see her mind working to get the right answer" as she mentally sifted through the different advice she had gotten on how to answer the question, like an overprepared dissertation student at orals.
In 2020 she had her brother-in-law, Tony West, as campaign Capo dei capi. She has leaned heavily on family. The 2020 campaign was a family start-up that failed spectacularly. Now West is back. So are a zillion other capi. Jen O'Malley Dillon has the title of campaign manager. David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager in 2008 just onboarded, to the relief of Democratic professionals.
Plouffe’s role is expected to ease concerns among some prominent Democrats about a potential lack of strategic direction at the top of Harris’ campaign.
But,
There were conflicting accounts inside Harris’s operation about Plouffe’s role, with some aides playing down how broad his portfolio will be and others emphasizing this as a major position.
There is the spaghetti lines of authority again.
“There will be several new roles/assignments,” according to a source familiar with the changes afoot. “He is the biggest one.”
But a campaign official sought to play down the importance of the Plouffe hire, emphasizing that the widely respected operative, like the other new hires, will report to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon. “He’s coming in for a very specific role,” the official said. “He’s not senior-advising the whole campaign. He’s senior advisor on 270 stuff.”
"270 stuff" is like the stuff. Plouffe has no clear role.
