The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly keeping President Joe Biden at arm’s length as the 81-year-old is itching to get out on the campaign trail for his former running mate.
Three people told Axios that the Harris campaign keeps saying that they’ll get back to the president’s team on when to send him out into the field.
The Harris campaign views Biden as a political liability but doesn’t want to say directly that they don’t want him to stump for the vice president. Democrats and some of Biden’s staff keep walking on eggshells around Biden’s ego and feelings, according to the outlet.
One person said it’s like a slow-moving break-up, with Harris’s team respecting Biden, but don’t want to connect a president with a 39 percent approval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight average, to their candidate who’s in a historically close race.
“He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward,” one person told Axios, referencing Harris’s slogan.
The Biden team has reportedly kept days open for campaigning, but Harris has allowed those days to pass, two people told the outlet, which noted that a White House official rejected this version of events.
With Election Day just over a week away, there are currently no events scheduled for Biden and Harris to campaign together.
Several people on Biden’s team, however, think the outgoing president could be helpful to Harris and that her team is underestimating his appeal among white working-class voters in states like Pennsylvania.
Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton’s support with some of these voters, which was vital to his 2020 victory in the state and the election as a whole.
The Biden team has reportedly taken stronger action recently, taking to Pittsburgh where Biden campaigned on his own this weekend, which several people on the Harris team were initially unaware of, according to two people speaking to Axios.
A White House official told the outlet that the Harris campaign had arranged the trip and wasn’t unaware.
“There is always speculation in political circles, but this is not accurate,” a White House spokesperson told Axios. “We are in close touch with the campaign to determine when, where, and how the president can be helpful.”
But the Harris campaign sent out an email outlining its events for Saturday in which Biden’s appearances weren’t cited.
Previously this month, Biden made an unannounced visit to the White House briefing room where he responded to reporters’ questions and accidentally diverted some media coverage of a Harris campaign event in Michigan.
A number of aides to Harris were frustrated this week as Biden told New Hampshire supporters that Trump should be locked up. Biden added that he meant “politically” but Trump and his fellow Republicans still used the slip-up as evidence that the Biden administration had unfairly prosecuted the former president.
Biden aides have had discussions about the president hitting the trail for senate candidates in Maryland and his home state of Delaware but the White House sees this as being in addition to the campaigning he would do for Harris, not instead.
