Harris strategy and staff recycles Obama’s 2008 playbook

While many people celebrated New Year’s Eve in 2007 with ambitions to overcome the financial crisis, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris spent the holiday at then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign headquarters.

Obama ran a successful 2008 presidential campaign, becoming the first black president and winning in a landslide against then-Sen. John McCain. Harris witnessed it in person, and in 2024 against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, she is emulating aspects of it.

And the parallels between Harris’s 2024 campaign and Obama’s presidential effort run deep.

Harris is trying to make inroads with youth voters using technology. She is trying to become the first female president, “breaking a glass ceiling” that Hillary Clinton did not. She is trying to excite black voters in the same way Obama did. Harris is even hiring some of Obama’s former staff members, adding 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, 2012 deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, and grassroots organizing strategist Mitch Stewart, according to the Washington Post.

Plouffe may be the most telling addition, given his critical role in Obama’s presidential efforts.

“There will be several new roles/assignments,” a source familiar with the changes afoot told Politico. “He is the biggest one.”

“There is no one you’d rather have in a foxhole with you in a battle like this,” said David Axelrod, who worked with Plouffe plenty during the Obama campaigns. “He’s seasoned. He’s brilliant. He’s seen it all.”

Plouffe will be working with Jen O’Malley Dillon, President Joe Biden’s former campaign manager and a 2012 Obama staffer who joined Harris after the president stepped down. He is plenty familiar with her, though.

“I think he’s going to be like a consigliere to Jen and the campaign,” Axelrod said. “She will figure out how to use him, but he’s not going to be anything but a team player.”

There is likely hope that the added team members for Harris’s campaign can provide the same energy behind Obama’s 2008 campaign.

“This team is a reflection of the vice president,” O’Malley Dillon said Friday. “It brings in people who have worked for her a long time, people who have been with her for the last few years of the administration. This team represents the vice president and how she looks at building consensus and also driving toward one united front to defeat Trump.”

There are still concrete differences between Harris’s 2024 campaign and Obama’s 2008 haul. While this is the first time she has been the Democratic nominee for president, she was on Biden’s 2020 ticket, so her name recognition changes the dynamic. She’s more well-known, but she’s also tied to the administration’s failings. Obama had neither of those things.

Obama also immensely benefited from running while unpopular Republican President George W. Bush was on his way out. That stain on the party likely dragged down McCain’s bid and boosted Obama’s. Harris will not get that boost, so in that way, she will have to pave her own path as well.

Harris does have the advantage of running against a former incumbent with baggage: Trump. The majority of voters have already made up their mind about him. The Republican nominee is also a proven presidential winner and loser, something Obama never faced. The vice president may tool her staff with key Obama figures, but this year’s race looks dramatically different.