“The president broke Axe and Robert’s hearts,” said one member of Obama’s inner circle. For those who remained, the departure of Axelrod and Gibbs sent a clear message: they were all dispensable. “He doesn’t need anyone,” said another member of the inner circle. “Axe and Gibbs were effectively fired. He owes everything to Axe. Everything. He’d never have gotten anywhere without him. I’d like to think he knows that and sees him differently. But I’m not sure.” Obama kept a close team of younger male staffers to manage his immediate needs, and that was all he needed. “He needs the guys to play cards and golf, and tell him where he’s going next and why,” said a former aide. “But beyond that, it’s what function you have. And if you can’t fulfill that function anymore, or someone can do it better, you’re gone. That’s hard for those of us who really believe in him. He expects full loyalty. But you need to have your eyes open.”…

Axelrod ran his message team independently of the person supposedly leading the entire operation. Until the fall of 2011, the two most senior figures of the reelection campaign were in open conflict. There would be little trust between them moving forward, and their dispute spilled into other relationships and operations across the Chicago office. Axelrod repeatedly tried to convince other senior aides to bypass Messina, and they believed he was trying to oust Messina altogether. Axelrod had never wanted him to get the job in the first place. Now he was complaining to others inside Obama’s inner circle about Messina’s shortcomings, but there was no support for a change of campaign manager. Axelrod knew that Plouffe had confidence in Messina, and nobody could come up with a good candidate to replace him. “For a good six months of that campaign, they were trying to wedge him out, which created all of the divisions,” said one senior Obama campaign official. “But there was no one else, and Messina had positioned himself with Plouffe. Axe had tried a long time to prevent him from getting that job.”

Messina returned fire in much the same way. He could not fire Axelrod—not least because Axelrod had already been pushed out. And he could hardly dismantle Axelrod’s team; that team was almost the entirety of the message machine. Instead, they fought by proxy, like cold war superpowers trapped inside the so-called Prudential building.