The reason that all of these negative stories about Fred are getting traction is because he’s not doing anything else. Not campaigning. Not participating in any debates. There’s no positive story to counter with. As Chris Cillizza notes:

Our sense of the ongoing Thompson staff shuffle is that it is teetering on the brink of becoming just plain bad news. The sharks are circling and whispers about the too-prominent role of Thompson’s wife — Jeri — are everywhere. With news of every departure, the story tilts away from Thompson’s best interests.

The audience for this story remains largely confined within the Beltway for the moment, which is good for Thompson. But staff stirrings can lead to stories about disorganization, unhappiness and general disorder, and that is a narrative that does Thompson’s “campaign” no good, especially as he prepares to launch his bid formally sometime in the next month or so.

Indeed. It’s not only the fact that the campaign is torn between pro and anti-Jeri factions, it’s that the advisers are leaking information that directly contradicts the leaks of other advisers. Several hours after Tom Collamore left the campaign, leaks began appearing that said that contrary to being fired, it was always the plan that he would only be with the campaign for a short while. A few hours after that, several sources confirmed that he was indeed let go because he butted heads with Jeri Thompson. Clearly, there is a lack of a unified message within the campaign.

This disturbing pattern was repeated today when a “Thompson associate” talking to Jim Geraghty disputed Marc Ambinder’s characterization of Sean LeBlond as Thompson’s lead political advance operative:

“LeBlond is a fine young man and a credit to his family, but he was a kid who was a junior, junior aide to[departed campaign chief] Tom Collamore,” the associate said. “He was not our lead political advance, he was never our lead political advance… We right how have political advance teams working before every stop Fred Thompson goes to. [LeBlond] may have assisted informally with the recent trips to New York and Richmond, but that’s it. We have additional advance staff that we’re going to be announcing soon, but they’ll be based out of Nashville, not Washington. LeBlond was based in Washington… This is a whole lot of nothing.”

Seems plausible enough. But the story wasn’t as cut and dry as that:

I should note that I’m hearing a different tune from another Thompson Associate. This individual has been less than thrilled with the developments in Thompson’s not-quite-campaign in recent weeks, and this person indicates that LeBlond’s activities were significantly more than the First Associate indicated.

There is a vocal (and seemingly growing) segment within the Thompson campaign that is deeply unsatisfied and is letting their frustrations be known. Several more resignations are expected over the next few days. This isn’t just the normal growing pains of a campaign. I think the fissures appeared because the team that was put together to run the show has no history of working together and there is no clearly defined hierarchical command structure. If Fred doesn’t step in and get his people on message, this will just continue to get worse.

The questions I have are: Does he attempt the stop this by pushing up his announcement plans and making it official next week? Or will he try and ride out the storm and stick the the original plans to kick off his campaign, which could be a while given that “October isn’t completely impossible”?