As the presidential election is becoming a close race, there are reports that the relationship between Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and current President Joe Biden is worsening. Citing 10 sources, online media outlet Axios reported on the 13th that “the relationship between the Harris team and Biden’s White House is getting worse in the final weeks before Election Day (November 5th).”
While they want Vice President Harris to win this election, many of Biden’s senior aides are still upset that the president has given up on reelection and are still adjusting to playing a supporting role for Vice President Harris. Harris’s team complained that “they (Biden’s team) are too emotional,” and that senior White House aides are not properly coordinating Biden’s message and schedule to best suit Harris’s presidential campaign. Axios cited Biden’s impromptu press conference at the White House on the 4th as an example.
At the time, Vice President Harris was scheduled to attend an event in Michigan, and Biden’s press conference inevitably reduced TV coverage of the event. Harris also criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, for not answering her phone calls about Hurricane Milton on the 9th, but Biden quickly praised DeSantis as “decent and cooperative.” Axios also pointed out that while Harris has tried to focus on voters’ financial situation, including inflation, Biden has recently been keen to boast about the strong employment report that helped end the dockworkers’ strike.
A source close to Harris’s campaign told Axios that “there’s not enough people in the White House who are thinking about how it will impact the election.” Tensions are also rising between staffers on both sides. Harris’s team has been trying to hire more staff in the vice president’s office to cope with the growing workload, but she has been frustrated with the White House’s ability to secure detailed staffing. Some of the Biden aides who joined Harris’s camp feel that they have been labeled disloyal for leaving or even considering joining the Biden team, and some on Harris’s team are wary of Biden’s staff, Axios reported.
In response, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said, “President Biden rejected any path that would divide the party immediately after dropping out of the race and supported Vice President Harris, and he has continued to do so,” adding, “He has made significant changes to ensure that all critical functions of the White House are staffed and that the vice president’s team has all the support and resources they need.”
This is an official denial of conflict between the two sides, but Axios argued that tensions between the two sides seem inevitable. Axios noted that “every incumbent vice president’s team that has run for president has had internal strife with the incumbent president’s team,” and that “the uncomfortable dynamic of a vice president running for president on behalf of the president he served was evident between Al Gore and Bill Clinton in 2000 and between George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan in 1988.”