One Clinton supporter told me that the very specter of Smith in a swing state is a sign that the old buddy system is still alive and well. To his credit, Smith (whose firm is paid $10,000 a month by Ready for Hillary) said he recognizes that “if there is a campaign, it’s got to be [made up of] people who know how to run a campaign of 2016.” In an effort to step up its grass-roots organizing, Ready for Hillary has already signed up numerous 20-something newcomers. It has also brought on the consulting company 270 Strategies, run by political operatives, including Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart, who were largely credited with Obama’s ground strategy in 2008 and 2012.

Where things get thorny, though, is that Priorities USA, the big-money group that helped get Obama elected, is situating itself as the dominant money-raiser in 2016. (Sean Sweeney, a founder of Priorities USA, says he supports Ready for Hillary’s “important” mission.) In fact, two Obama operatives, Messina and Buffy Wicks, have already signed on to Priorities to turn it into a big-money behemoth devoted to a Clinton candidacy, and some Ready for Hillary supporters have accused Priorities of already trying to take credit for getting their candidate elected. (Never mind that the election is more than two years away and that there’s technically no candidate yet.) Certainly Wicks and Messina offer something that the Clinton old guard doesn’t — a link to the network of donors who supported Obama. But also crucial is the fact that neither has ever worked for the Clintons, which allows them to navigate the waters more easily. They don’t carry the baggage, for instance, of other old friends who helped get Obama elected. David Axelrod, in particular, was approached by Solis Doyle as early as 2006 to join the Hillary campaign, and his decision to sign on with Obama was the first real signal that the Illinois senator might create a problem. Among Obama aides, there’s a sense that Bill Clinton never quite forgave him. “The Clintons make you feel like you’re part of their family; that’s just who they are,” says Brazile, whose neutrality during the 2008 Democratic primaries was seen by numerous Clinton hands as an act of betrayal. “Try divorcing them. I did, and oh, my God, that’s not easy. I felt like I had broken up with my best lover.”

It’s not just the rogue friends and former staff members who present potential problems. In the past, the Royal Council hasn’t always gotten along so well with President Clinton’s advisers, referred to sardonically by Hillary’s staff members in White House as “the White Boys.” The tensions have ebbed and flowed over the years but reached a low in 2007, when there was an early tug-of-war about how the campaign should utilize, and dote on, the former president. Recently, more existential differences have surfaced. People close to Bill Clinton have told me repeatedly that it irks them that Democrats don’t talk about the dignified, slimmed-down, silver-haired former president with the same reverence Republicans give Ronald Reagan. According to those people, Bill Clinton, who is conscious of the demands of a presidential race and what another loss would do to his own legacy and philanthropic work, is deferential about whether his wife should run. When people shout at him that they’re ready for Hillary, he simply responds with a “Thank you,” rather than asking for their support as he did leading up to the 2008 campaign. (That doesn’t mean he’s not curious. When Ready for Hillary held a seminar for donors at Le Parker Meridien hotel last fall to discuss what it would take to win in 2016, Bill Clinton personally checked in with an attendee to ask what was being discussed and who was there.)

Efforts to cement Bill’s legacy appear somewhat unaligned with Hillary’s forward-looking team. (At a recent book party in New York, Bill started his speech by saying, “I’m not much for living in the past, but I do think it’s worth going back to what we’ve faced,” and then proceeded to talk for 20 minutes about electoral politics and his career, dating to 1968.) Denizens of Hillaryland often express exasperation that even after successfully serving in the Senate and as secretary of state, their boss is still so closely identified with her husband. “It’s my pet peeve when they’re described as an entity,” Geoffrey Garin, who stepped in as a chief strategist after Mark Penn’s disastrous run in ’08, told me. “Obviously they are married and do things together, but they are two separate people with two separate identities in political life.”