Biden adviser: Presidential campaign 'was less consultant-driven than any' in 'modern history'

President-elect Joe Biden's path to victory wasn't an easy one — at one point, early in the Democratic primaries, it even seemed like he could wind up an afterthought — but he ultimately emerged as the projected winner Saturday. And it appears that sticking to his own personal vision during his campaign, even if it seemed unpersuasive at times to other Democrats, is at least part of what pushed him over the line, The New York Times reports.

"It was his campaign," Anita Dunn, one of his closest advisers, told the Times. "It was less consultant-driven than any presidential campaign in modern history."

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) recalled hearing Biden's original pitch for the White House back in 2019, before he announced his candidacy. Casey said he wasn't convinced by Biden's messaging "about the soul of the country," especially at a time of intense ideological division across the United States. "I was worried at the time at the time that it wasn't hard-hitting enough," Casey told the Times, but he admitted the former vice president "was prescient in his ability, even in the primaries when almost nobody else was doing it, to say, 'We have to bring the country back together.'" Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.