Barack Obama veterans view his 2012 reelection campaign as a master class in political organizing, one that offers key lessons for 2024. And some believe it’s been dangerously ignored by a Joe Biden team that prides itself on its own victory over Donald Trump four years ago.

It’s an extended Democratic family friction borne of convictions and pride, but also real strategic differences over how to run a presidential campaign. The debate has been playing out in urgent private conversations and occasionally public broadsides as a looming general election re-match between Trump and Biden has Democrats on edge.

At a Chicago gathering of Obama alumni late last year, attendees quietly raised worries that Biden’s reelection operation was too bare-bones — that he hadn’t announced staff in key battleground states or dispatched any of his top White House lieutenants to campaign headquarters in Wilmington. Some, more pointedly, were concerned than Biden’s 2020 pandemic campaign, run largely from his home in Delaware, left the president and his team unfamiliar with the complexities of a true national ground game.

“The big issue I have is Biden never had an organization before. He didn't have much in the Dem primary. Then the general was during Covid and no ground stuff was really done,” said a former 2012 battleground state director for Obama, who, like others for this story, was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. But this election he won’t have that luxury, the director said.

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To hear former President Donald Trump tell it, America’s farmers never had it so good as during his four years in the White House.

“Look I did get you $28 billion, in all fairness, right? Who the hell else would get you $28 billion from China?” Trump asked a crowd in Sioux Center, Iowa last week, part of his final campaign push ahead of the state’s GOP caucuses Monday.

The $28 billion Trump mentioned didn’t actually come from China, however. It was paid out by the U.S. government to compensate farmers harmed by Trump’s trade war with Beijing.

As for his question, who else could get that much money for farmers, the answer is: the Biden administration.

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Congressional leaders will move next week to pass a two-tiered stopgap into March, with six days left until the first of two government shutdown deadlines.

The new funding patch would keep federal agencies running on two different timeframes, like the current stopgap. Funding for some federal agencies would expire March 1, while funding for others would run through March 8, according to a source familiar with the proposal.

Speaker Mike Johnson is backing the plan, which is necessary to finish a slate of 12 spending bills for the current fiscal year, after he previously rejected the notion of another short-term funding extension. Johnson is expected to brief the GOP conference on Sunday night.

The second "laddered" approach will almost certainly require hefty Democratic support to pass the House, while conservatives fume at the Louisiana Republican for cutting a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on a government funding framework for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

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John Kerry plans to step down from his position as President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy in late winter or early spring, a person familiar with his plans told POLITICO on Saturday.

The person was granted anonymity to discuss a move that has not been publicly announced.

Kerry’s departure from the position comes just weeks after he led the U.S. negotiating team at the U.N. climate conference in Dubai, where countries for the first time agreed to work toward transitioning away from using fossil fuels in the coming decades. Carbon pollution from those fuels helped drive the world’s temperatures to the highest level in recorded history last year.

The news was first reported by Axios, which said Kerry plans to help Biden’s reelection campaign. Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s infrastructure czar, also recently announced he would leave his position to join the campaign effort. Kerry is leaving at a crucial juncture for U.S. climate diplomacy — but also at a time when the most dire threat to Biden's climate goals is a potential second term for former President Donald Trump.

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Yet another big-name Democratic political operative is delivering some frank advice to President Joe Biden and his top aides: Time to get out from behind the podium, start interacting with voters and give up on the "Bidenomics" message.

This time the real talk is coming from Symone Sanders-Townsend, who four years ago was part of a shoestring, money-crunched Biden campaign that was just hoping to survive tough early primary contests and hold out until more diverse voters got a chance to weigh in.

Sanders-Townsend went to to serve as a top adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris and is now hosting “The Weekend,” a brand new MSNBC show airing Saturday and Sunday mornings with Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele. We caught up with her at NBC’s Washington studios after a recent rehearsal.

“They talked a lot about acronyms in the beginning and not enough about the plain things," she said of the Biden camp. “They are not going to get ‘Bidenomics.’ Let it go. How about you just make sure they know what you’re going to do and what you did?"

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President Joe Biden’s campaign is tapping a veteran of Jon Stewart’s old show and a top aide from a progressive stalwart in the latest move to build out its national staff.

The reelection campaign is set to announce on Saturday two new hires, one to its research and one to its communications teams.

Andy Crystal, who previously led research at The Problem with Jon Stewart and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, will be the campaign’s research director. Lauren Hitt, who most recently served as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) communications director, will be a senior national spokesperson for the campaign. Kevin Munoz, who was one of the first Biden reelection staffers, will be made senior national spokesperson.

Their hires, shared first with POLITICO, underscore the haste with which the reelection is now bringing operatives on board as the general election nears. The Biden campaign also announced battleground states director and top aides in North Carolina last week.

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The U.S. carried out strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen for a second straight day Friday, two U.S. officials said, further involving the Biden administration in a Middle East fight that has split opinion in Washington.

The U.S., alongside four other countries, hit nearly 30 Houthi positions Thursday night after the Iran-backed militant group escalated its attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. President Joe Biden authorized the strikes designed to punish the Houthis and deter them from further threatening global trade.

The U.S. targeted a radar site that was missed in the first barrage, which the Biden administration feared could still threaten maritime traffic, one of the officials said. The U.S. attacked on its own.

The strike was conducted by the USS Carney using Tomahawk Land Attack missiles, U.S. Central Command said in a statement released later Friday.

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President Joe Biden on Friday notified Congress of his strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, writing in a letter that they “were taken to deter and degrade Houthi capacity to conduct future attacks.”

The air and missile strikes Thursday came in response to repeated attacks on commercial ships by Iran-backed Houthi militants in the Red Sea. Biden had been facing growing pressure to respond to the attacks, which began two months ago.

“I directed the strikes in order to protect and defend our personnel and assets, to degrade and disrupt the ability of the Houthi militants to carry out future attacks against the United States and against vessels operating in the Red Sea region, and to deter the Houthi militants from conducting or supporting further attacks that could further destabilize the region and threaten United States strategic interests,” Biden wrote in his letter, which he is required to send in accordance with the War Powers Resolution.

Members of Congress from both parties criticized the president on Thursday for not seeking congressional approval for the strikes.

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TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A federal judge on Friday rejected a bid to require Florida Democrats to hold a presidential primary in March.

Florida’s Democratic primary was scuttled because President Joe Biden was the lone candidate certified to state election officials. It was a decision that rankled other Democrats, including Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) who is challenging Biden and called it “intentional disenfranchisement.”

A Tampa attorney challenged the decision and asked U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor to force the state to hold a primary that would feature Biden and Phillips as well as spiritual author Marianne Williamson and progressive Cenk Uygur.

Michael Steinberg argued that the party actions were unconstitutional and compared them to past laws that allowed state parties to limit participation based on discriminatory factors such as race.

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President Joe Biden’s decision to strike Houthi rebels followed a familiar playbook: gather allies, act slowly and telegraph widely.

It’s a strategy he has favored time and time again to minimize blowback and seek the support of wary allies for military action. It’s also a strategy that already has critics arguing he took too long.

Ever since the Iran-backed militants first attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea two months ago, Biden has asked his top aides to keep tabs on the situation and lay the groundwork in case retaliatory strikes were ever needed. As the U.S. developed military options, the administration went on a regional diplomatic offensive, trying to calm tensions while garnering support for a defensive mission and the possible use of force. In the end, the strikes in Yemen — conducted by four other countries alongside the U.S. — followed many verbal warnings, the creation of a maritime protection force and passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

“It was very thought out,” said a senior administration official, like others granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal thinking.

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President Joe Biden on Friday said he maintains confidence in Lloyd Austin, even as he described his defense secretary’s decision to not reveal his hospitalization as a lapse in judgment.

Biden’s remarks were his first after it was revealed that Austin had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and hospitalized with a urinary tract infection, unbeknownst to virtually everyone in the government, including the president.

The two men had talked last weekend by phone but Austin did not reveal his diagnosis at the time. Biden had told his aides he would not accept a resignation from Austin even if he offered one. But he also instructed his chief of staff, Jeff Zients, to inform Cabinet members that they needed to lay out their delegation of authority protocols so that a similar situation would not happen again.

Biden was at a coffee shop in the midst of a swing Friday through Pennsylvania when he was asked if he had confidence in Austin.

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President Joe Biden is adding a new tool to his arsenal for canceling student debt in the coming months as his 2024 reelection campaign ramps up.

The White House is set to announce Friday that the administration will implement earlier than planned a provision of Biden’s new loan repayment program that forgives debt for borrowers who initially borrowed less than $12,000 and have made payments for 10 years.

Federal student loan borrowers typically must repay their debts for 20 or 25 years to have their remaining balances discharged under the Education Department’s income-driven repayment plans. But Biden’s “SAVE plan” offers a new, shorter timeline to forgiveness for borrowers who took out a relatively small amount of debt.

That benefit was slated to take effect in July alongside other benefits, such as lower monthly payments for borrowers. But administration officials now plan to begin canceling student debt under the SAVE plan starting next month.

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“I’m appalled,” fumes U.S. Rep. and presidential hopeful Dean Phillips. “I’m disappointed. I’m disgusted that professionals who ostensibly have committed their entire careers to sharing truth and to providing facts and to sharing information with American voters … are fundamentally avoiding their responsibilities.”

Phillips is on the phone from icy New Hampshire, where he’s currently running 60 or so points behind President Joe Biden in Democratic primary polls. But he may as well be calling from the sidewalk outside MSNBC’s Capitol Hill studio, watching the fancy guests come and go, hoping in vain for Chris Hayes or Joy Reid or Jen Psaki to bring him in from the cold.

Phillips shouldn’t count on being ushered inside for hot cocoa anytime soon.

Since declaring his candidacy on Oct. 27, Phillips says, he hasn’t been interviewed once on the favorite network of his fellow Democrats. Ditto big Sunday shows. He’s been on CNN a handful of times, but never given the town-hall treatment afforded fellow single-digit candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, both of whom happen to have challenged Donald Trump rather than Biden.

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David Axelrod recently got a gift in the mail.

It was a box of political pins that captured the unique role that the former top Barack Obama strategist has carved out for himself as a 2024 political commentator — and how allies of the current president see Axelrod at this moment in time.

The message on the pins? “Pricks for Biden.”

For years now, Axelrod has used his many platforms — two podcasts, CNN punditry and regular interviews with political reporters — to offer a lot of unvarnished advice for and criticism of Joe Biden.

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President Joe Biden was still on his holiday getaway in St. Croix when he spoke with his national security team on the first morning of 2024. The Iran-backed Houthis had launched yet another attack on international shipping in the Red Sea, and the president was ready to discuss the possibility of a military response.

The president’s guidance was twofold. On the diplomatic front, he directed his team to push harder for a United Nations resolution to condemn the attacks. On the military side, he ordered the Pentagon to develop options to strike back at the Houthis.

That New Year's Day meeting ultimately resulted in the U.S. and its allies launching a massive assault on Houthi targets in Yemen 10 days later on Thursday in retaliation for the group’s repeated missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping in international waters since November.

American and British fighter jets, along with U.S. warships and submarines, bombarded Houthi military sites across Yemen, focusing on launch and storage sites for drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. Among the vessels taking part was the USS Florida, a guided-missile submarine that fires Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to a person familiar. F/A-18 Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower were also involved.

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A group of progressive Democratic lawmakers on Thursday responded furiously to President Joe Biden's move to launch retaliatory strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen without first seeking congressional approval.

The strikes marked the first major U.S. military response to the group’s ongoing attacks on commercial ships since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Biden administration justified the joint strikes with the United Kingdom, supported by the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, as conducted "in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense, consistent with the UN Charter."

Lawmakers argued that the move violated Article 1 of the Constitution, which requires military action to be authorized by Congress. Biden notified Congress but did not request its approval.

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The United States and its allies on Thursday launched air and missile strikes at Houthi rebel targets across Yemen after the Iran-backed militia staged multiple drone and missile attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea.

The joint assault, which involved U.S. aircraft, ships and submarines, came after the Houthis ignored weeks of warnings by Washington and its allies to stop their attacks on vessels in the commercially important waterway. The U.S. and the U.K., with support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Bahrain, conducted the strikes.

“The response of the international community to these reckless attacks has been united and resolute,” President Joe Biden said. “These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes.

The strikes targeted radar systems, as well as storage and launch sites for drones, cruise and ballistic missiles across “a large area of Yemen,” according to a Defense Department official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the operation ahead of the announcement. The targets were chosen “to degrade the Houthi ability to continue endangering mariners in the Red Sea.” No civilians were assessed to be present at the sites, the official said.

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One of the most immediate fallouts of the Lloyd Austin saga will come tomorrow, when all Cabinet agencies must submit their procedures for delegating authority to the White House.

They will do so in response to an order from chief of staff Jeff Zients, who demanded as much after the Defense secretary’s secret hospitalization sparked questions about transparency and ensuring lines of succession.

To break down this particular element of an ever-expanding story, West Wing Playbook called Leon Panetta, who served both as White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton and secretary of Defense under Barack Obama. This conversation has been edited for length.

What’s gone through your mind has you’ve followed this story? 

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First lady Jill Biden defended attacks against her family in an interview on MSNBC aired Thursday as President Joe Biden’s campaign faces scrutiny in his fight to win reelection.

The president has received criticism over his age — he’s currently 81 and would be 86 by the end of a second term.

Jill Biden described her husband’s age as an “asset” to his presidency, citing his time in politics and relationships with other world leaders.

“I see his vigor, I see his energy, I see his passion every single day,” Jill Biden told “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski in the prerecorded interview. “He has wisdom, he has experience.”

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KINMEN ISLAND, TAIWAN — It’s a brisk winter morning on the waters near the line that divides the Taiwanese island of Kinmen and the People’s Republic of China. These waters have historically marked one of the key borders between the authoritarian world and the democratic world.

The winds and swell are low, meaning that our current course toward the boundary can be only on purpose. The Taiwanese Coast Guard picks up our trajectory and calls the captain, Lu Wen Hsiung, a fisherman who works these waters regularly. He assures the voice on the line that we intend no funny business and are just looking for a good place to set anchor and fish.

This weekend, people like Lu will vote in a critical presidential election that largely hinges on the question of whether Taiwan should opt for closer relations with the communist behemoth next door. The voting comes at a time when congressional hesitation over approving aid to both Ukraine and Taiwan is fueling anxieties over whether U.S. allies can depend on America when the chips are down.

Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began two years ago, foreign policy experts have tied the two conflicts together, arguing that any failure of the West to counter Russia’s aggression could embolden China, ever eager to retake Taiwan.

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