There will also be objections if Biden hires from investment banks, private equity firms or other financial institutions and progressives say that he, like Obama, should bar corporate lobbyists from his transition team and administration.
Eight groups representing young progressives wrote to Biden with a list of personnel recommendations and have asked that he “pledge to appoint zero current or former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists, or people affiliated with the fossil fuel, health insurance or private prison corporations, to your transition team, adviser roles, or cabinet.”
No Medicare for All
Biden has made clear his leftward steps only go so far. He says he’s not going to adopt Medicare for All or the full Green New Deal. If he’s elected, no set of senior administration officials is going to look the same as it would in a Sanders or Warren administration, his campaign says.
Still, Biden’s team is actively stressing to progressives that there’s plenty they’ll like about his campaign and, if elected, his administration.
Biden appointees “won’t be guided by a market fundamentalism that guided even Democratic economic teams in past administrations because the times have changed in that regard,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s former chief economist in the White House who is, like Summers, an informal adviser to Biden’s campaign.
“The optimal team has people with different views in the room and gets the balance right,” he said.
While progressives like Bernstein were outnumbered during the Obama years, Bernstein said he believes Biden will build “a much more balanced group with an ample supply of established progressive economists who recognize the importance of the leftward movement in the party in areas of labor power, trade, fiscal policy and deficits, minimum wages, health care and family supports.”
“Personnel and a policy agenda go hand-in-hand,” said Steph Sterling, vice president for advocacy and policy at the progressive Roosevelt Institute, which has ties to Warren and worked closely with Hillary Clinton’s team in 2016. Biden, she said, should select aides who believe in “the power of the government to reshape and reform markets instead of reinforcing and exacerbating extractive corporate power.”
Although Biden has adopted the centrist mantle, Bernstein said he has always favored working-class Americans over the wealthy and powerful. “I’ve heard concerns about the little guy and gal getting left behind and the unequal access of corporate power to Washington,” he said, adding that Biden called him last week to express concern that small businesses were missing out on loans from the Paycheck Protection Program.
Progressives say Bernstein is a reassuring presence, as is former Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman, Biden’s former Senate chief of staff and longtime friend, who worked aggressively for breaking up the big banks. Kaufman succeeded Warren as chair of the panel overseeing how stimulus money was spent after the 2008 recession and is close to her. Biden told donors Monday he is talking to Kaufman about his transition team.