WASHINGTON — As President Joe Biden’s team quietly made plans to launch his re-election campaign, top advisers inside and outside the White House began an outreach effort to retain a crucial piece of the Democratic coalition: progressives.
About a month before his campaign announcement, longtime Biden adviser Anita Dunn invited Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 bid, to the White House. The meeting was a check-in with Shakir, who remains a political adviser to Sanders, to make sure he and other progressives knew they still had an open line with Biden’s team.
The invitation was part of a long-running outreach effort by top administration officials to progressive leaders, largely led by new White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, whose appointment some in the party’s progressive wing had received with some skepticism.
Zients personally reached out to Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., two progressive challengers Biden dispatched in the 2020 primary, and House Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. sources familiar with each. of the talks she said. All three have said they will support Biden next year.
“President Biden can run with major gains ranging from $35 worth of insulin to the largest climate package in world history, paid for with my minimum 15% corporate tax,” Warren said in an interview. “The president has accomplished a lot, but he still has a lot of work to do. Most importantly, the president is out there to talk about what he has done and what he plans to do next. That’s where the game really is.»
The early outreach is a signal to progressives that Biden and his team understand they will need their support to occupy the White House next year.
Biden has long had an uneasy relationship with the left, which largely voted for Sanders in the 2020 primary campaign amid reservations about Biden’s reputation as an old-school moderate who has broken with progressives in some. key themes. After Sanders retired, Biden worked quickly to mend relations with progressive and young voters through a «unity task force» that laid out his shared views.
This time, Biden seeks to keep them in the fold from day one of his re-election campaign, even as he faces pressure to shift further to the center on politically thorny issues Republicans hope to use against him, such as immigration and domestic energy production.
«This [White House] he is one who has made sure that there are open lines of communication,” Shakir said. He said that while the talks aren’t always easy, White House officials «are doing everything they can to make sure we’re heard.»
By and large, Biden has exceeded expectations on the left since taking office. But while the specter of a Donald Trump return is expected to keep the party together, it comes with its own set of challenges.
Biden’s balancing act will be maintaining solid progressive support while appealing to fickle independent voters, who backed him in 2020.
“Getting young people and progressives to vote will make a difference in battleground states like Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., national co-chairman of Sanders’ 2020 campaign. “This is why we need to talk about a second-term agenda for Biden to build on the Cut Inflation Act and take bold climate action, cancel student debt, and stop predatory rent increases. As one of the top 20 surrogates for the president, I will travel the country making that case.»
People familiar with the interactions say Zients has spoken frequently with Sanders about the administration’s priorities, including the Senate confirmation of Julie Su as labor secretary. She was also recently texting with Jayapal, a former Biden critic who forged a relationship with him and his team since the 2020 election, about an opinion piece she wrote praising the “fundamental change in economic policy that has occurred in the last two years”, which he called “Bidenomics”.
Zients’ reach has also extended to labor leaders such as AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry, and American Federation of Teachers Director Randi Weingarten.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, said Biden is the Democratic Party’s «de facto nominee» in the upcoming election and is the vehicle for a broader post-2024 agenda.
“This is the path to codify Roe and pass democracy reform in 2025. Indivisible is determined to build the new Democratic trifecta to get there,” Levin said, referring to control of the White House and both houses of Congress. “For us, the reality remains that the greatest threat to progressive change is the Republican assault on our democracy.
“Trump is a great unifier and motivator for all of us in the pro-democracy space,” he said.
Levin warned, however, that any shift to the right could dampen Democratic enthusiasm, citing reports that the administration is considering bringing back the detention of migrant families, which he said would be «bad policy» and «terrible policy.» ” with the base.
“Our volunteers are the ones who showed up to protest the Muslim ban, the border wall and family separation under Trump,” he said. “Embracing Trump-era immigration policies is a good way to dampen the enthusiasm of these people.”
Shakir offered similar warnings that it won’t be enough for Biden to simply remind the base of what he accomplished in his first two years as president.
“Biden would do well to remember that people don’t vote on the record of what you accomplished, as much as you think you want them to,” he said. “They will vote on: What are you going to do for me next?”