Three Presidents With a Complex Past Team Up to Defeat Trump

WASHINGTON—When President Biden takes the stage in New York City Thursday for a major campaign fundraiser with two former Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, there will be plenty of shared history and unity about the stakes of the 2024 election—and a few long-simmering resentments.

Biden has deep ties to Obama, with whom he served as vice president for eight years, and a lengthy past with Clinton, who presided over a legislative agenda in the 1990s that was helped by Biden’s senior role in the Senate. The incumbent has talked with both the 42nd and 44th presidents about the best strategies for beating the 45th, Donald Trump, again in November.

But the relationships carry a degree of complexity: Some members of Biden’s inner circle felt Obama’s team was dismissive of the then-vice president. Current White House officials have privately chafed at comments by a high-profile Obama alumnus questioning the president’s re-election prospects. And Obama’s encouragement of Hillary Clinton to pursue the White House in the 2016 election—long before Biden had made his own decision—was an irritant linking all three camps.

Now, though, “they’re all united by the threat of Trump,” said James Carville, a former Clinton campaign strategist. “Every politician has a history with another one. That’s just part of life. But I do think they are pretty unified by the threat.”

The rare gathering of the current and two former presidents—the kind of meeting that often accompanies a state funeral, a presidential library opening or an inauguration—comes as Biden tries to achieve what his two predecessors managed to accomplish: Win a second term in a difficult political climate.

Biden’s pitch to voters pulls from the legacies of both of his predecessors in some ways: an economic turnaround that both Clinton and Obama engineered during their eight years, along with warnings that a return to Republican rule would represent a setback for the nation.

Despite some of their past differences, the three leaders are mindful of what a second Trump presidency would mean for the country, their party and their legacies.

Their joint efforts are paying off: Thursday’s event will bring in more than $25 million, the Biden campaign said, a huge amount for a single-day fundraiser.

Attendees will see the trio on stage at Radio City Music Hall with late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert for a moderated conversation and the program will be hosted by actress Mindy Kaling and include musical performances by Queen Latifah and Lizzo. Some top donors will have their photo with the three presidents taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz and donors are expected to gather with campaign officials the following day in New York.

The gathering aims to enhance Biden’s substantial fundraising lead over Trump, with the president’s campaign apparatus reporting $155 million in the bank through the end of February. (Trump, for his part, is also trying to raise money off the event; his campaign sent an email to supporters Wednesday asking for contributions to defeat “the Obama-Clinton cartel.”)

While they will raise money together, the Biden and Obama camps have had their share of intrigue. David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Obama, drew the ire of some White House officials when he questioned whether Biden should run for re-election given the president’s age of 81 and the high stakes of the election against Trump.

Some former Obama aides, meanwhile, took umbrage when Biden’s team characterized the president’s first-term agenda as bold and transformational, descriptions that appeared to suggest Obama’s record was more conventional.

And some resentment lingered from a decade ago. Obama was viewed as supportive of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid long before Biden announced in October 2015 that he wouldn’t seek the presidency following the death of his son, Beau Biden. After Clinton was defeated by Trump, Biden faulted his party for failing to connect with working-class voters, and his team saw his 2020 victory as vindication.

All drama aside, the ties between Biden, Obama and Clinton run deep, with current and former staffers forming concentric circles.

Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain, worked on both Clinton campaigns, and oversaw judicial appointments at the White House, while Bruce Reed, Biden’s deputy chief of staff, worked closely with Clinton while he was Arkansas’s governor and later at the White House. Steve Ricchetti, the president’s counselor, worked in the Clinton White House and like Klain and Reed, later served as Biden’s vice presidential chief of staff.

An observer of “The War Room,” the documentary about the 1992 Clinton campaign, will notice a 30-something Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime political strategist, conferring with Carville in scenes inside their Little Rock, Ark., headquarters. (Klain makes a cameo.) And plenty of current White House aides served under Obama.

Obama and Biden speak regularly, according to people familiar with their interactions, and many of those meetings and conversations aren’t disclosed publicly. Those conversations cover topics such as 2024, healthcare and artificial intelligence, some people said.

In November, Obama called Biden to wish him a happy birthday, and the president invited him for lunch at the White House. Obama visited shortly before departing for his annual end-of-the-year vacation in Hawaii.

During the lunch, Obama and Biden discussed how Obama had structured his 2012 re-election campaign, placing certain key advisers in their Chicago headquarters, while keeping top aides, such as David Plouffe, at the White House, according to people familiar with the conversation. Obama, who has told people he worries Democrats could lose the election, raised concerns at the lunch about the threat that Trump poses—a sentiment that Biden has voiced publicly—but one of the people said it didn’t represent “a vote of no confidence” in the re-election campaign.

Obama was also at the White House last week, along with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to appear in a digital spot marking the anniversary of Obama’s healthcare law.

Biden has also held a number of private calls with Clinton, with whom he worked closely decades ago on judicial nominations and a 1994 criminal justice law that included an assault-weapons ban while Biden led the Senate Judiciary Committee. People close to Clinton say the former president has an ironclad rule that he never initiates phone calls to sitting presidents—but happily offers advice when called upon.

Clinton has spoken to the president about messaging on the U.S. economy, telling Biden he has a strong case to make to the American people, according to people familiar with their discussions. Clinton spent some one-on-one time with Biden during a flight aboard Air Force One to Georgia in November for a memorial service for the late first lady Rosalynn Carter.

The former president was very appreciative when Biden invited him back to the White House for a February 2023 event marking the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act, an early Clinton achievement.

Senior aides to Biden are also in regular touch with the ex-presidents. White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, an Obama White House alum, has spoken with Obama at Biden’s direction, said people familiar with the talks. So have key advisers Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Reed and Donilon. Ricchetti is in regular touch with Clinton, and other aides have spoken to him as well.

One longtime Clinton adviser said the fundraiser will likely mark the start of the deployment of major Democratic assets, from Obama and Clinton, and key surrogates in the party, now that Trump has become the presumptive Republican nominee. Obama is expected to hold fundraisers for the campaign arms of House and Senate Democrats, as he has done in the past, while Clinton expects to play a more active role than in recent years—and will help whenever he is asked.

Catherine Lucey contributed to this article.

Write to Ken Thomas at [email protected]